For the past 15 years, no one - NO ONE - has suggested that federal powder cocaine mandatory minimums are too light. Now that legislation has been introduced to make crack sentences equal to powder sentences, some are suggesting the powder thresholds should be lowered. What?!?!
Keep in mind that when the drug safety valve was expanded in the First Step Act just 3 years ago, no one expressed any concern that this would allow more powder defendants to get shorter sentences. (We did hear that about fentanyl.) Most people who support reform acknowledge...
that weight alone isn't a good proxy for culpability or role. So why now do we only hear about the need to toughen powder sentences when an effort is made to adjust crack penalties to equalize them? Seems so disingenuous. Could it be because cocaine is a growing problem?
Not if you look at the most recent U.S. Sentencing Commission data. Of the 16k federal drug trafficking cases in 2020, only 7.3% were for crack and 16.6 were for powder. Contrast that to meth, which accounted for 46.1 percent of convictions. Nearly half for meth!
And guess which drug right now carries the toughest penalties? Of course: meth. Meth's mandatory minimum threshold is still 5 grams. 5 years for 5 grams! So, the toughest penalty is being applied to the drug that is getting more popular.
Anyone who thinks our federal drug sentencing scheme is working is not paying attention. And those who recognize that we need to improve this system should not support "reforms" that increase the number of people subject to federal mandatory minimums. #EndTheDisparity

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More from @KevinARing

22 Jun
I’m not a Deep State conspiracy guy, but how in the world is the National Association of Assistant US Attorneys a thing? If they simply fought for higher pay and less accountability, which they do, that would be one thing.
But they take positions on national policy. In fact, today, their testimony on the crack disparity begins by saying we don’t take positions on legislation and then proceeds to state all of the reasons they oppose the EQUAL Act.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department, where they work, supports the EQUAL Act. In what other agency does this happen? If the Secretary Blinken testifies in favor of preferred trade status with China, can a bunch of State Dept underlings testify in opposition?
Read 5 tweets
29 Apr
Women whose husbands were serving time with "Big John" Jackson started to hear things and worry. John's wife Kesha was already worried because she knew John had suffered from blood clots in his leg and now was in the hole, so she had no way to communicate with him.
One of the wives finally reached Kesha. She told her that some of the guys were in the visiting room and saw a man being taken out on gurney. They said it was Big John. Kesha spent the rest of the night frantically calling the prison. No one took her call or gave her information.
Another wife called her and said she heard that John had been banging on his door and asking the guards for help. Kesha couldn't sleep. In the early morning, she kept checking BOP's inmate locator to see if Big John's location had changed. Maybe he'd been moved.
Read 4 tweets
20 Jan
One last kick in the groin from the Trump Justice Department: while the White House was deciding on which 70+ sentences to commute, its DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel put out a memo which could force BOP to bring thousands of people on home confinement back to prison.
This should be stopped and I think it will be. The Biden DOJ can and should rescind the OLC opinion and if necessary Congress could pass a legislative fix. But the OLC memo, dated 1/15/2021, is a poorly reasoned piece of cruelty that could make families worry unnecessarily.
When this issue first came up - @waltpavlo reported on a US attorney who suggested people who received extra home confinement under the CARES Act would have to return when the AG declared the emergency over - we reached out to the White House. The White House reached out to DOJ.
Read 8 tweets
20 Jan
@lfrenchnews, this is awful fear mongering. Seriously. I am glad you allowed people opposed to mandatory minimum to state their case, but no one will be able to consider the arguments when you lead with such an emotional crime.
wtvr.com/news/problem-s…
Unless I am missing something, of all the mandatory minimum sentences the legislature is considering repealing, none would have applied in the case you spotlight. The man could have received the same sentence today. Your viewers should be made aware of that.
Also, you have to realize that highlighting the case of one person who re-offended is how the US ended up with the highest incarceration rate in the western world. We simply can't sentence our way to zero risk. If there were some data to suggest that VA judges...
Read 4 tweets
25 Sep 20
I saw an article that expressed skepticism about the First Step Act and success of recent federal reforms. I know being angry about everything is in fashion and that progress is considered problematic in case it breeds complacency, but let's run through some numbers...
The federal prison system is the biggest in the country. In 2013, year 5 of the Obama admin, the fed system ballooned to 219,298 people. Awful. Then, it finally started to fall. Today, the population is down to 155,530 people, a drop of nearly 64,000, which is 29 percent.
Do we want to reduce it further? Of course. Can we? Of course. But a 29 percent decrease in population is a good start. The fed prison population is down 17 percent since Trump took office. (Did anyone predict that? Sure...)
Read 9 tweets
2 Sep 20
Today we wanted to reframe our core work to better advance the values we care about, including fairness, rehabilitation, and community safety.

Some thoughts...

link.medium.com/sTwhuw2Uq9
The feds and state govts are very good at locking people up. We have plenty of laws, especially mandatory sentencing laws and enhancements, to ensure that people spends lots of time in prison, especially when they have the temerity to exercise their right to trial.
What has been made painfully clear during the COVID-19 pandemic is that states don't have enough mechanisms to revisit lengthy sentences when appropriate, either because of an emergency, because the law has changed, or the person or their circumstances have changed.
Read 14 tweets

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