![](artwork2/27taskbar.jpg) |
Senate Bill 1874:
Recognition of injustice is not reform
Called the "Drug Sentencing Reform Act
of 2001," and introduced by drug warrior, Jeff Sessions
(R-AL) and co-sponsored by another, Orrin Hatch (R-UT) last December,
it is bold admission that crack laws have had negative, disproportionate
racial impact on people of color. The proponents of the bill
want elderly people to be released, and they argue that low-level
players in drug conspiracies are serving too much prison time.
Sadly, the bill doesn't address any of these
problems, aside from lowering the current five-year sentence
for merely possessing crack to one year. After that, the bill
turns right. It favors raising guideline sentencing numbers for
powder cocaine convictions, typifying new circumstances during
commission of a drug law violation, quickly adding more years
to an already incredibly stiff guideline sentence while furthering
the overcrowding of federal prisons, the final, terrible expense
in dollars and human suffering.
Future drug defendants, from provisions of
this bill, would not be sentenced to more than 10 years if they
had a 'minimal role' in the offense, which on the face of it
sounds like reform. "What is a minimal role?" Chuck
Armsbury asks. "The prosecutors and FBI agents decide what
the role is going to be, and the snitches tell the story."
In December, according to the Wall Street
Journal, Hatch and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), wrote Diana Murphy,
Chair of the US Sentencing Commission, requesting "guidance
as we continue to evaluate the appropriateness of the penalty
differential between powder and crack cocaine." The Sentencing
Commission published requests for comment in the Federal Register,
and, rumor is, the comment time has been extended.
The US Sentencing Commission admits that only
about 67 crack defendants who have entered the federal prison
system in the last three years would have been helped by its
recent proposals. Would have is an operative word here, indicating
no hint of retroactivity for prisoners anywhereeven
as the word "reform" is awkwardly attached to a sentencing
bill that would have only helped 67 people out of thousands upon
thousands of crack arrests annually.
"It is political grandstanding; they
are trying to appease our mounting dissent," warns Gary
Callahan, prisoner of the drug war and co-founder of the November
Coalition. "Most prosecutors throw an 'intent to distribute'
charge on top of the snitch's tale. I'm not sure I've never met
a crack prisoner doing time for possession, but I've never been
in the camps. So, I've asked men that have been to the camps.
They haven't met any either."
Sessions, Hatch and the entire Congress and
Sentencing Commission do not really need this reminder, but perhaps
our members do: Because people of color are historically policed
as a group more repressively than white people, 85 percent of
powder cocaine defendants are black or brown.
"This train of pain may be headed in
a new direction," wrote David Sullivan, a prisoner of the
drug war. "But they are tentative, insufficient steps that
only recognize that there has been great injustice in sentencing."
"Our leaders have been ignoring the fact
that prosecutors have a plethora of weapons in their legal arsenals.
This power remains, just as the continued judicial approval of
it. The result is simply license for continuing abuse, misuse
and ever longer prison sentences," Sullivan concluded.
The bill is not reform, only an admission
of injustice in the present federal sentencing system, plus more
proposed injustice. Members write to tell how disappointed they
were that the news of "reform" was only a cloak for
a rash of harsher guideline sentencing. Most feel ever more forsaken
and abandoned by leadership.
"Words rolling around in DC need to be
taken to heart. To make such admissions of racial disparity or
question it openly, such as Sen. Leahy has done, was encouraging,"
said Nora Callahan, Director of the November Coalition. "But
the bill itself is another entire entity, with a title designed
to raise hope, and contents that are cruel. Now that is a mixed
message. The drug war is cruel, though, and you'd think we would
all just get used to it. We don't, though. Every day the injustice
breaks our hearts all over again. Bills like S. 1874 just make
us more determined to expose the injustice, and makes it easier
for us to do it, too."
The Razor Wire is a publication of The November Coalition,
a nonprofit organization that advocates drug law reform. Contact
information: moreinfo@november.org
282 West Astor - Colville, Washington 99114 - (509) 684-1550
SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
|