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Some
boast that this “lock-em-up” approach has
produced the lower crime rates
of recent years—while ignoring the turmoil soaring expenditures for prison
construction and the housing of a growing prison population has created for
such other state budgetary expenditures as those devoted to higher education.
And
ignoring the question of how the society is to cope in the future with a large
and ever-growing cohort of ex-offenders who won’t be able to vote and
who’ll have terrible prospects for ever gaining legal employment.
Others
reject the claim that the get-tough approach has been beneficial, asserting
that demographic developments, increased crime prevention efforts by both
police and community agencies, and the positive impact of the long 1990s
period of economic prosperity have by far been more important.
As
the former Mayor of a big city—New Orleans—who led a coalition of police
and civic leaders and community organizations in taking a significant
“bite” out of crime during the 1990s, I share the latter view.
Recently,
three studies, one from the federal government, and two by private think
tanks, have underscored the cliff’s edge to which America’s obsession with
incarceration has led it.
One
report, released this month by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, evaluates the
effectiveness and fairness of the guidelines federal judges must follow in
sentencing convicted defendants.
A
second, by The Sentencing Project, of Washington, D.C., compares—in this
year marking the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision
in the Brown school-desegregation
case—the promise of Brown to the
growth of the “incarceration dynamic” in American life.
In
both instances, the issue of the explosive growth in the incarceration of
African Americans and Latino Americans is at the center of the discussion.
With
good reason: For, although they comprise just 6 percent of the total
American population, African-American males make up more than 44 percent, or
nearly 819,000, of America’s inmates.
The
corrosive impact of the black-male incarceration rate is even worse than one
might initially suspect, however—because, according to a third study by the
Justice Policy Institute, in recent years the number of African-American
females being incarcerated has risen sharply.
The
Institute found that three-fourths of the more than 101, 000 women in federal
and state prisons last year were African-American.
The statistics mean that black women are more than twice as likely as
Latinos
and five times as likely as white women to be in prison.
Vince
Schiraldi, of the JPI, pointed out the frighteningly obvious:
That “the penetration of the prison system into the black family is
extraordinary.”
And
the same is becoming true of Latino Americans, who, while making up 15 percent
of the nation’s inmate population, which is close to their percentage of the
total population, are actually the fastest-growing group of those being
imprisoned.
Most
of both groups’ growth in incarceration since the 1970s has resulted from
convictions for relatively low-level drug-usage and drug-trafficking crimes;
and here, as the U.S. Sentencing Commission study describes in detail, the
role of the federal sentencing guidelines has been critical—and devastating.
While
declaring that the sentencing guidelines, devised 15 years ago, have been
overwhelmingly fair and effective, the Commission makes clear that description
does not apply in one particular area: the
different mandatory minimum sentences the guidelines require for possession or
trafficking of crack cocaine, on the one hand, and powder cocaine, on the
other.
Congressional
legislation mandates that those convicted of possessing just five grams of
crack cocaine—a cheaper drug whose users and traffickers overwhelmingly are
black—receive a minimum sentence of five years.
But
it takes conviction for possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine—the more
expensive form of the drug whose users overwhelmingly are white—to trigger a
five-year mandatory sentence.
The
original justification for the gross sentencing disparity—that crack cocaine
was a more destructive form of the drug—has long been disproved.
But Congress thus far has refused to follow the oft-repeated
recommendation of the Commission and many others that it amend the guidelines
and eliminate the disparate treatment.
Thus,
as the Commission report notes, crack cocaine remains “the only drug for
which simple possession of greater than five grams, even without intent to
distribute, is treated the same as drug trafficking,” and for “no other
drug are such harsh penalties imposed on such low-level offenders.
Revising the crack cocaine [sentencing guidelines] … would dramatically
improve the fairness of the federal sentencing system.”
And
it would be one-step in reducing America’s own addiction to the
incarceration dynamic.
MarcMorial@MaximsNews.com
*Marc
Morial's Columns in MaximsNews.com
Reforming America’s Obsession with Incarceration... 7
December 2004
A
Pre-Election Snapshot of Black America... 26
October 2004
Issues for the Candidates—and for Us... 19
October 2004
The
“Routine” Tragedy in the Sudan... 2
September 2004
A
Wonderful Life... 26
August 2004
America,
We Have A Problem...
19
August 2004
Looking
Forward; Leaving No One Behind... 28
July 200428
July 2004
Empowering
Communities, Changing Lives... 8
July 2004
July:
The Other Black History Month...
30
June 2004
Justice
for History’s Sake—and Our Own... 24
June 2004
Let
America Be America The Beautiful...
16
June 2004
Quiet
Activism on The Movement’s Front Lines... 8
June 2004
Vernon
Jarrett, Dreamer and Doer... 2
June 2004
Buddy
Fletcher’s Gift...
26
May 2004
The
Murder of Emmett Till: Still
Seeking Justice...
20 May
2004
The
Meaning
of the Brown Decision... 12
May 2004
The
Complexity of Black Achievement...
4
May 2004
USA
Today’s Con Artist...
27
April 2004
The
“Moving Target” of Black Educational Progress...
13
April 2004
Elaine
Jones: Energized by Adversity...
6
April 2004
The
Urban League in Washington: Bringing
Reinforcements... 30
March 2004
The
Pain of Those Left Behind... 17
March 2004
Deeply
Desiring Denial... 9
March 2004
One
Step Forward; Two Steps Back...
3
March 2004
Innocent
of the Crime, But Almost Executed Anyway... 24
February 2004
Civil
Rights: America’s Unfinished Business...
17
February 2004
What
Will They Do Now? 2
February 2004
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