It’s finally happened!
Following decades of unequal and racist criminal punishments, a ballooning and unsustainable prison population and the decimation of minority communities and families caused by strict mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes, U.S. President Barack Obama has decided the restrictive punishments for nonviolent drug offences need to go.
Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech to the American Bar Association today discussing his intention to walk back some of the most egregious effects of mandatory minimum sentences. During a speech earlier this year, he said, “We should ask ourselves as a society, are we putting the right people in jail for appropriate amounts of time?”
Holder has told federal prosecutors not to charge offenders convicted of nonviolent drug offences who do not appear to have ties to larger criminal organizations with the types of crimes that carry harsh mandatory minimum sentences.
Despite this good news, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Obama and Holder aren’t going to do as much as they should to fight the systemic racism in the American criminal system. From Politico:
“We must never stop being tough on crime. But we must also be smarter on crime,” Holder is to say in his [American Bar Association] speech. “Such legislation will ultimately save our country billions of dollars. And the President and I look forward to working with members of both parties to refine and advance these proposals.”
“Tough on crime,” “working with members of both parties” and advancing “proposals” (as opposed to doing things) are all signs that while the administration may be ready to take some action, they’re not prepared to take any actions that might be construed as radical. They still plan to operate within whatever consensus Washington reaches on the issue, and it looks unlikely they will issue any daring challenges to the Republicans to shape up and quit being racist assholes.
Still, some action is (hopefully) better than no action. Maybe seeing American politicians and lawyers recognize the futility of handing nonviolent offenders serious time will encourage Canadian politicians and law enforcement officials to do the same. Canada is also suffering from overcrowding in prisons, partly a result of following in America’s footsteps with mandatory sentences.
[Politico] [image via Martin/Flickr]