END RACIST SENTENCING LAWS AND EXCESSIVE PRISON SENTENCES
For over 35 years, federal law has imposed unjust and harsh penalties on crack offenses – far outweighing the mandatory prison sentences for powder cocaine. This decades-long disparity has disproportionately devastated communities of color and Black families in particular.
Recent changes in federal law – enacted by the First Step Act of 2018 – that lowered sentences for certain offenses are not being applied to everyone, leaving people sentenced under the old laws behind. It’s time Congress takes action to reform these federal sentencing laws because the overwhelming majority of people locked away and forced into our prison systems continue to be Black.
The First Step Implementation Act (FSIA) and EQUAL Act are two critical bills that will reduce mandatory minimums for crack and other offenses and make those reductions retroactive – so people sentenced before laws changed aren’t left with outdated, excessive prison sentences.
Finally, these two critical pieces of legislation will help eliminate the racist sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine laws that exist in this country and reduce other excessively long sentences.
ADMINISTRATIVE FEES
Senate Bill 144, introduced by Senator Holly J. Mitchell, was amended with a text that will end the assessment and collection of administrative fees imposed against people in the criminal justice system. By doing so, it would dramatically reduce the economic hardships caused by court-ordered debt and enhance the economic security of system-involved populations, their families, and their communities. SB 144 will usher in an era of criminal justice policy that does not rely on stripping wealth from communities of color and low-income communities. The Debt-Free Justice Coalition is sponsoring the legislation and has issued the following statements:
“Eliminating administrative fees will allow formerly incarcerated people to devote their already limited resources to critical needs like food, education, housing, and health insurance. Repealing criminal fees will result in improved employment prospects for formerly incarcerated people and put more money in the pockets of economically insecure families, aiding successful reentry and reducing California’s recidivism rate.”
— Jessica Bartholow, Western Center on Law and Poverty
Read the full statement here.
Mandatory Minimums
Recidivism occurs when a former convict again commits a crime after release. And, truth be told, the best way to prevent someone from receding into a life of crime is to stop them from going to prison in the first place. As you will discover in this piece, the problem with recidivism in America really begins with mandatory minimums, specifically those on crack cocaine. They changed the landscape of criminal justice in the United States for the entire generation that followed.
In order for justice to be done, we have to ensure that the facts are heard and that context is given to each and every situation. Before the 1980s, at least at the federal level, this was the way crimes were handled. Judges would do what they were appointed to do — use their judgment. By making use of federal sentencing guidelines, they would consider the merits of a case and use that in accordance with the guidelines as written. That all changed with the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act.
These are minimum sentences that were not up to interpretation. It didn’t matter if the offender had no history of criminal activity. It didn’t matter if the offender was being coerced. It simply didn’t matter. Something called “truth in sentencing” ended up extending sentences far longer than they usually would be.
For instance, normally, an inmate will serve about 75% of their sentence. Most will rehabilitate and qualify for parole earlier than the actual time listed for good behavior. But the “truth in sentencing” laws mean that, even if a criminal has completely changed his ways, he’s still going to serve the remainder of the sentence behind bars. Not contributing to society, not getting a job and paying taxes, not spending time with their families and helping to build their communities — simply locked away, purely out of spite.
Also, the concept of “three strikes” laws that many state legislatures have implemented is an additional way to circumvent sentencing guidelines and to simply lock a person up and throw away the key. In these systems, an offender could commit three small misdemeanors and get severe sentences, including life in prison.
But what ended up happening as a result is a problem that we are still dealing with to this day, and will not soon recover from without great effort.
The problem is that mandatory minimums effectively made most of our prisons academies for violent crime.
Take an offender who’s only 17, gets caught distributing crack cocaine for the first time, and without a record. Then, that same offender gets put int prison for ten years — the mandatory minimum sentence. By the time he gets out at 27, he has no marketable job skills, yet has received an education in criminal activity while in prison. Unfortunately, our system takes all criminals, regardless of history of violence, and places them all into the same place.
The outcome means that 17 year old is all but guaranteed to commit more crimes once released. It’s all he’s known in his entire adult life. Now, there are some who point out that there are plenty of programs for bettering one’s self while behind bars, and this is true. But not everyone has access to them. Not everyone has the resources needed to get through them. And not everyone has had the good fortune of being mentored into making better life choices.
There are so many additional issues that come up when talking about recidivism and what factors lead to more crime. It’s imperative that we expand the conversation to get deeper into what causes recidivism, and how we can stop a person from going to prison, to begin with. That is the only way that we’ll stop recidivism for good.
