Political leaders Essay

Must acknowledge the excessive and raci tout ensembley dis proportional im prisonment of nonviolent do do mediciness offenders and grapple forthrightly with ship canal to ward off it. The first step is to reevaluate the trustworthy st targetgies for fighting medicates. Policy makers in from distributively one adduce, as swell as in the federal government, should reassess existing universe policy approaches to drug practise and gross r blushue to identify much equitable hardly still effective options.In particular, they should get wind the costs and benefits of relying heavily on punishable sanctions to addressdrug use and drug trafficking and should look nigh at law enforcement st prisegies to identify ways to make them more racially equitable. We cogitate each state as well as the federal government should substance current and proposed drug policies to strict test and modify those that cause significant, unwarranted racial disparities. In addition, we believe t he state and federal governments should* Eliminate mandatary minimum sentencing laws that invite prison sentences based on the innate of the drug sold and the existence of a prior read. Offenders who differ in impairment of conduct, danger to the community, culpability, and separate ways applicable to the purposes of sentencing should non be handleed identically. decide should be able to exercise their aw ar judgment in crafting effective and proportionate sentences in each case. * improver the handiness and use of alternative sanctions for nonviolent drug offenders. medicine defendants convicted of nonviolent offenses should ordinarily non be given prison sentences, plane if they are repeat offenders, unless they have caused or threatened specific, serious harm for example, when drug sales are made to children or if they have upper take aim roles in drug distribution organizations. * Increase the use of special drug courts in which given up offenders are given th e opportunity to get along court supervised substance ill-usage discussion instead of being sentenced to prison.* Increase the availability of substance abuse treatment and prevention outreach in the community as well as in jails and prisons. * send law enforcement and prosecution resources to emphasize the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of importers, manufacturers, and major distributors, e. g. , drug king pins, or else than low level offenders and street level retail dealers. * Eliminate different sentencing structures for gunpowder cocaine and disfigurement cocaine, drugs that are pharmacologically identical but marketed in a different form.Since more blacks are prosecuted for crumple cocaine offenses and thus subjected to the higher penalties for sever offenses that exist in federal and any(prenominal) state laws, the crack-powder sentencing differential aggravates without adequate exculpation the racial disparities in imprisonment for drug offenses. * Elimina te racial profiling and take police to come up and make reality statistics on the reason for all simoleons and searches and the backwash of the persons targeted. * Require police to keep and make public statistics on the race of arrested drug offenders and the location of the arrests.To facilitate more inter-state abominable justice analyses, the Bureau of justice Statistics of the U. S. segment of jurist should annually pile up and publish state-by-state statistics on the racial opposition of the criminal justice system as it applies to drug offenders, including statistics on arrests, convictions, sentences, admissions to prison, and prison populations.II. THE bound OF U. S. INCARCERATION In the year 2001, the total number of people in U. S. prisons and jails leave alone surpass two million.12 The state and federal prison population has quadrupled since 1980 and the rate of enslavement relative to the nations population has risen from 139 per 100,000 residents to 468. 1 3 If these captivity range persist, an estimated one in xx of the Statess children today result serve time in a state or federal prison during his or her lifetime. 14 There is a considerable range in prison incarceration rates among U. S. states ( instrument panel 1). Minnesota has the lowest rate, 121 prisoners per 100,000 residents, and Louisiana the highest, with a rate of 763. septenary of the ten states with the highest incarceration rates are in the confederation.15 Almost each state has a prison incarceration rate that greatly exceeds those of other Hesperian democracies, in which between 35 and cxlv residents per 100,000 are behind bars on an average day. 16 The District of Columbia, an all told urban jurisdiction, has a rate of 1,600. 1 chitchat charitable Rights accompany, Cruel and mutual Disproportionate Sentences for late York medicine Offenders ( peeled York Human Rights Watch, 1997). Thirty two states have mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug off enses. Bureau of nicety Assistance, National Assessment of Structured Sentencing U. S. subdivision of umpire (February 1996). Mandatory sentences are not responsible for all excessive drug sentences. In Oklahoma, for example, a jury in 1997 gave a sentence of 93 long time to Will Forster, an employed father of deuce-ace with no prior criminal record who grew marijuana plants in his basement. 2 Michael Tonry, victimize Neglect Race, Crime, and Punishment in the States (New York Oxford University Press, 1995) David Cole, No Equal justice (New YorkThe New Press, 1999) David Musto, The American Disease Origins of Narcotic work (New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 1973).3 go through, e. g. , Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, The spell Attack, Politics and Media in the Crack Scare, in Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, Crack in America (Berkeley University of California Press, 1997) .4 Barry R. McCaffrey Race and Drugs Perception and human beings, New Rules for Crack Versus Powder Cocaine, Washington Times, October 5, 1997 citing results of a survey published in 1995 Burston, Jones, and Robert-Saunders, Drug Use and African Americans Myth Versus Reality in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education.Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a black drug user period only 5 percent imagined other racial groups. 5 According to the unify States Sentencing Commission, 88. 3 percent of federal crack cocaine defendants were black. United States Sentencing Commission, Special advertise to the Congress Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, 1995, Washington, D. C. , 1995, p. 156. The sentencing laws of at least ten states also treat crack cocaine offenses more harshly than powder.6 See Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project Losing the Vote The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement constabulary in the United States, (New York Washington, D. C. , 1998) 7 The indispensability of proof of intent has been a unnerving barrier for victims of discriminatio n in the criminal justice system seeking legal relief. See, e. g. , Developments in the uprightness Race and the cruel Process, 101 Harvard Law Review 1520 (1988). 8 International Convention on the excretion of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Par. I, Article 1,3.In the Centre for Human Rights, Human Rights A Compilation of International Instruments, Vol. , ST/HR/1/REV. 5 (New York United Nations, 1994), p. 66. Also ready(prenominal) at http//www. un. org/Depts/Treaty/. 9 See CERD, General Recommendation XIV(42) on phrase 1, paragraph 1, of the Convention, U. N. GAOR, 48th Sess. , Supp. No. 18, at 176, U. N. Doc. A/48/18(1993). See also, Theodor Meron, The moment and Reach of the International Convention on the voiding of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 79 The American Journal of International Law 283, 287-88 (1985).10 Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, General Recommendation on Par. I, Article 1 of CERD. 11 See Todd R. Clear, The Unintended Conseq uences of Incarceration, (paper presented to the NIJ Workshop on department of corrections Research, February 14-15, 1996). 12 Allen J. Beck, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 1999, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice (April 2000). 13 Ibid. Kathleen Maguire and Ann L. Pastore, eds. , 1998 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice (1999), Table 6. 36. 14 Thomas P. Bonczar and Allen J. Beck, life-time Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice (March 1997). 15 In each of the twenty years since 1978 for which data is available, the South has had significantly higher incarceration rates than any other region. See BJS, 1998 Sourcebook, Table 6. 37 . 16 The number of prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants varies widely distributed from roughly 20 in Indonesia to about 685 in Russia.In Western Europe, the rate ranges between 35 in Cyprus and one hun dred forty-five in Portugal. Andre Kuhn, Incarceration Rates across the World, Overcrowded Times, April 1999, p. 1. International rates of incarceration include prisoners awaiting sentences as well as all sentenced prisoners, whereas state prisons in the U. S. only hold convicted prisoners with sentences of more than one year. Therefore, the actual remainder between foreign rates of incarceration and U. S. prison incarceration rates is even greater than suggested. http//www. hrw. org/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00-03. htmP222_42059.