From: [v--d--t] at [twain.ucs.umass.edu] (Sol Lightman)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: Race and Drug Crimes
Date: 13 Jul 1993 16:01:50 GMT
Using an as yet undetermined appendage Jerry Stratton ([j--r--y] at [teetot.acusd.edu]) wrote:
]Something that's 'commonly' known is that, while whites make up the
]majority of illegal drug users, minorities make up the majority of drug
]arrests & convictions.
]I can't find statistics on this anywhere. Can anyone point me to a
]source that either backs this up or disproves it?
Check out the group FAMM for more of this information. Carrier Substance laws
are first on their agenda, but the Racist aspects of the drug war have
become an important issue, next on their agenda, as far as I can tell.
They have a few articles in the disparities between Crack and Powder Cocaine
sentencing in their latest newsletter, The FAMMgram. They may be sending
me the FAMMgram on disk to publish to the net.
Check out the post below for the statistics you were after:
Brian
---
Yesterday at our last general meeting of the semester, Nancy Brown,
the New England coordinator for Families Against Mandatory Minimums,
spoke as a guest. Some of the things she had to say appalled me.
She began her speech by rattling off a list of sentences delivered
under the Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Guidelines now in effect in this
country. The list was just the tip of an iceburg, but even so, it
contained several sentences which could only be described as utterly
insane.
For those of you who are unaware of what Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
is all about, I will breifly describe to you this system.
I have sitting on my desk a chart which Mrs. Brown gave me, along
with other materials. On one axis is the severity of a criminal
offense. On the other are what can be best thought of as the opposite
of `brownie points' called Criminal History Points.
When a person is convicted of a crime in this country, their
criminal history is examined and they are given criminal history
points according to guidelines set forth by the federal government.
Their offense is also assigned a severity rating by another set
of guidelines.
A judge, when determining that person's sentence, does not need
to use his own discretion, he just looks up the sentence on the
chart and off they go to prison. In fact, the judge is not
allowed to adjust the sentence on the chart ... downward.
Exceptions to this rule are afforded for the following reasons:
1) The defendant ratted out somebody else
2) The defendent must be hospitalized, or in-house detention
is deemed adequate for this case (i.e. a handicapped person)
The entire attached document, which describes the Criminal
History Point system is cleverly written to discourage the very
thought of reduced sentences. 100% of the examples given which
describe a situation where the sentences may be altered, describe
an increase in the sentence.
So what happens when a person is convicted of an offense which
requires, say, a ten year sentence, and they only deserve, say,
two? They get ten. Period. End of case.
Now the system which I have described seems very logical at first
glance -- applying a uniform sentence based on history and severity
of offense -- which is probably why it has been in effect for so
long. But let us take a look at what has happenned during that
period.
I was also supplied with the following statistics.
o The US now has the highest incarceration rate in the ENTIRE WORLD.
425/100,000. Only the former Soviet Union and S. Africa come close.
o From 1975 to 1990, the US prison population has more than quadrupled
We now imprison people at a rate 4 times that of most European
countries, with no noticeable effect on the crime rate.
o The US now has 1.2 million people in jail or prison. In order
to provide for our weekly influx of 2000 prisoners, we would
have to build 4 new prisons a week, that's $2billion/month
o The cost to maintain our current prison population is $16 billion
a year. Each prisoner costs $20,000 per year.
o Corrections is the fastest growing public sector employment.
o One out of every four African American males are in custody
on any given day. This compares to 1 out of 16 for South Africa.
o If we continue our present rate of prison population increase,
1/2 of our population will be in prison by 2053.
It is plain to me that this constitutes a problem.
Attorney General Janet Reno has called for a reveiw of these guidelines.
If you would like to express your support for reformation of
these guidelines and/or current drug laws and drug sentencing,
the phone number of her office is:
Office of Attorney General Janet Reno: 202-514-2000
And her address is:
Janet Reno
Dept. of Justice
Constitution ave & 10th st
Washington DC 20530
The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee is Charles Schumes.
If you would like to express your thoughts to his office,
call Cheif Council Paul Beaulier (BOWL-LERR) at 202-226-2406.
There is currently a bill in the Congress to reform the
Sentencing Guidelines. The Edwards Bill, introduced by
Representative Don Edwards, is bill HR957. It would remove
mandatory minimum sentencing from the federal law books.
The following members of the Judiciary Committee are not
sympathetic to the Edwards bill. It would probably be in
your best interests to inundate them with mail.
Rep. Charles Schumer
2412 Rayburn Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515
1628 Kings Highway Brooklyn N.Y. 11229
Rep. John Conyers Jr.
2426 Rayburn Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515-2201
Federal Bldg. Rm. 669 231 W. Lafayette Detroit MI 48226
Rep. George W. Gekas
1519 Longworth Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515-3817
Rep. Dan Glickman
2311 Rayburn Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515-1604
Room 134 401 N. Market St. Wichita KS 67201
Rep. Romano L. Mazzoli
2246 Rayburn Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515-1703
Federal Bldg. Rm. 551
600 Martin Luther King Pl. Louisville KY 40202-22
Rep. Jim Ramstad
504 Cannon Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20545-2306
8120 Pennsylvania Ave. So. Suite 152 Bloomington MN 55431
Rep. George E. Sangmeister
1032 Longworth Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515-1304
101 N. Joliet St. Joliet IL 60431
Rep. Steven H. Schiff
1427 Longworth Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515-3101
625 Silver Ave. SW Suite 140 Albequerque NM 87102
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner Jr.
2444 Rayburn Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515-4909
120 Bishops Way Brookfield WI 53005
Rep. Lamar Smith
422 Cannon Office Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515-4321
10010 San Pedro Ave. Suite 530 San Antonio TX 78216
Several federal circuit judges are refusing to hear drug cases
in protest of the drug laws/mandatory sentencing.
In addition, one judge, Hon. Whitman Knapp of Manhattan, has actually
defied the mandatory minimum guidelines by delivering a reduced
sentence. Several Congressmen are right now making motions to
impeach him.
Please educate yourselves about these events and write to your
local newpapers and other periodicals in support of these brave
stands, and the above proposed legislation.
Two groups you should consider joining are:
Families Against Mandatory Minimums
1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Suite 200 South
Washington D.C. 20004
(I have addresses of the local branches.)
Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants
P.O. Box 2310
Washington, D.C. 20013-2310
202-842-1650 Ext. 320
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Justice Mocked; The farce of mandatory minimum sentences.
By Colman McCarthy
A year ago Patricia Martorana, a 20-year-old woman I came to know and
admire when she had been a gifted student leader at Vero Beach (Fla.)
High School, was attending Valencia Community College in Orlando. She
waited tables to earn tuition money. Her career plans included earning a
degree to work for the Florida forestry department as a wildlife
conservationist.
Today Martorana is caged in a federal prison in Marianna, Fla. She is
three months into a two-year sentence after plea bargaining to a charge
of conspiracy to distribute LSD.
I doubt if any member of Congress had Patricia Martorana or citizens
like her in mind when the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed.
Amendments that were a pitched response to get tough on drug offenders
set mandatory minimum sentences. Judges were left with no sentencing
options. The congressional intent was to cast a judicial net so wide and
tight that, at last, drug lords and kingpins would be snared and given
the stiff punishment they deserved. And members of Congress could
champion themselves as winning the war on drugs.
They're winning all right - small. Patricia Martorana, whose case is not
unusual, according to legislative and judicial groups that monitor the
effects of mandatory minimums, was a nonviolent first offender. She did
not deal, buy, sell or use drugs. Her "conspiracy" to distribute LSD, as
detailed in the plea agreement with a federal prosecutor, was marginal
and fleeting at best.
Last May, Martorana was phoned at home by an undercover agent posing as
a buyer. He had been given her number by a high school friend of
Martorana. The agent, along with a government informant who was
cooperating to have time cut from his sentence from an earlier drug
crime, was directed by Martorana to someone she knew at work who was a
dealer. The agent paid him $1,340 for 1,000 dosage units of LSD.
Martorana was given $100 as a commission by her co-worker. In a stakeout
of the young woman's apartment, surveillance agents learned it was there
that the dealer transferred the LSD to Martorana's high school friend,
who then sold it to the undercover agent outside.
For this role in a relatively minor drug deal set up by legal
entrapment, and in a state teeming with violent and huge drug rings, a
young college student is now a federal prisoner. When Martorana was
sentenced in early November, a family member recalls, the judge
expressed a sentiment of frustration routinely heard from the bench: the
mandatory minimum sentencing law gave him no choice but imprisoning the
student for two years. He was forbidden to consider that this was a
nonviolent first offense or that Martorana's participation was small or
that her mother recently died of cancer and her father is disabled.
Probation, community service or counseling was out.
On Feb. 17, Rep. Don Edwards (D-Calif.) introduced legislation calling
for an end to mandatory minimums. He was responding to the increasing
opposition to the restriction from the American Bar Association, judges
in all 12 judicial circuits and the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Occasionally a jurist can no longer take it. In late 1990, a
Reagan-appointed federal judge in San Diego resigned because of
mandatory minimums: "They have destroyed the discretion of judges," J.
Lawrence Irving said. "They are grossly unfair to the litigants. For the
most part the sentences are excessive, particularly for first-time
offenders."
It works the other way, too, as in "guideline sentences." This is a
process by which drug kingpins can bargain for lower sentences if they
cooperate with prosecutors by fingering others in the ring. A mandatory
sentence can be avoided by naming names. "The moral of this story," says
Julie Stewart, director of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a
Washington advocacy group, "is that if you're going to get caught on a
drug charge, be a kingpin. You can talk and get off lightly. It also
means that those who have little or no information to bargain with get
the hardest hit. They're the least guilty."
FAMM's files bulge with cases of citizens serving drug sentences of 5,
10 and 20 years without parole chances for first and often minor
offenses.
Inside her Florida prison, Patricia Martorana sees the injustice up
close: "There are women here serving 10 to 15 years on charges of drug
conspiracy. They are doing more time than some murderers. I would say
that over 50 percent of the women here are first offenders."
All are doing hard time, compliments of a simplistic law passed - and
kept on the books - by an unthinking Congress. In addition to
brutalizing the lives of people like Patricia Martorana, justice itself
is mocked. Forced to obey mandatory minimums, judges can't judge. They
can only process, stamping defendants as they pass by like slabs of meat
on a judicial conveyor belt. If the 1986 law has had a measurable effect
on drug deals, it's news to the judges.
]Jerry Stratton
][j--r--y] at [teetot.acusd.edu]
]------
] Blow the horn, tap the tambourine.
] Close the gap on the dark years in between.
] You and me, Cassidy.
] Cassidy
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