TWO NATIONAL GROUPS WORKING FOR PRISON REFORM

Here are releases from FAMM and the Sentenching Project

FAMM urges Sentencing Commission to make crack cocaine guideline
amendment retroactive

Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), the nation's leading
sentencing reform organization with 13,000 members, today calls on the
U.S. Sentencing Commission to make retroactive the crack cocaine
guideline amendment that went into effect on November 1. FAMM has
spearheaded the effort to make the crack cocaine guideline change apply
to people already in prison, helping generate over 30,000 letters to
the Sentencing Commission in support of retroactivity.

Nearly 20,000 prisoners could see their sentences reduced by an average
of more than two years, if the so-called "crack minus two"
guideline amendment that went into effect on November 1 is made
retroactive.

On November 13, FAMM members from across the country will attend the
Commission's public hearing on retroactivity in Washington, D.C.,
bearing photographs of their incarcerated loved ones. FAMM president
Julie Stewart will also testify at the hearing at 3:30 p.m.
"Retroactivity of the crack guideline will not only affect the
lives of nearly 20,000 individuals in prison but that of thousands more
- mothers, fathers, daughters and sons - who anxiously wait for them to
return home." said Stewart. Visit www.famm.org to read Stewart's
testimony to the Commission.

Since 1995, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has repeatedly advised
Congress that there is no rational, scientific basis for the 100-to-1
ratio between crack and powder cocaine sentences. The Commission has
also identified the disparity as the "single most important"
factor in longer sentences for African Americans compared to other
racial groups. The criminal law committee of the Judicial Conference of
the United States, which represents the federal judges who would
administer the application of the amendment to people in prison, has
written the Commission in favor of retroactivity.

"Nearly 80 percent of defendants convicted of federal crack
cocaine offenses after Nov. 1 now face sentences 16 months shorter on
average, thanks to sentencing guideline reforms approved by the U.S.
Sentencing Commission," said Julie Stewart, president and founder
of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). "The Sentencing
Commission must now make the change retroactive. If a sentence is
sufficient to serve the purposes of punishment for defendants in the
future, it is sufficient for those who were sentenced under unjust
rules in the past. Clearly, justice should not turn on the date an
individual is sentenced."

Many FAMM members, including Lamont and Lawrence Garrison, would
benefit if the changes are made retroactive. Arrested just months after
graduating from Howard University, Lamont received 19 years and
Lawrence received 15 years, respectively, after being accused of
conspiring to distribute crack and powder cocaine. Both brothers would
receive sentence reductions between three and four years.

However, neither the new guideline nor making it retroactive will
impact the statutory 100-to-1 quantity disparity between crack and
powder cocaine. "Congress must act to address the mandatory
minimums that created the cocaine sentencing disparity in 1986 in order
to ensure equal justice for all defendants," said Stewart.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) is the national voice for
fair and proportionate sentencing laws. FAMM shines a light on the
human face of sentencing, advocate for state and federal sentencing
reform, and mobilize thousands of individuals and families whose lives
are adversely affected by unjust sentences.

To speak to Julie Stewart about these changes, or to arrange an
interview with people affected by mandatory sentencing laws, including
Lawrence and Lamont Garrison's mother, Karen Garrison, please email
media@famm.org.

_______________________________________________
Dear Friends,

Tomorrow I will be testifying before the U.S. Sentencing Commission to urge the
Commission to make retroactive its recent guideline amendment [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001EGi_ygjACRO6SJElZr4q1rp2hICqWV0O_Y6Smr4VJwF9cZjABZo_w3LbTa9AzEBfW-sGMDZXCOn9FN1pGQ9NpLSvydRawzxF8yYPOMrwUnoS0MFZCYxvqvP-JkUaie0RKPN7Dns81UgUP_BnZsfUx6finsoLu0A4]
on crack cocaine offenses. If the Commission does so, an estimated 19,500 persons
in prison will be eligible for a sentence reduction averaging more than two years.


My testimony [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001EGi_ygjACRMnfCRAz_id8LwiGMSs0GYLlJ7h0FOMgXUNyje4ca3WCzzqDicYHdNSLKfHq3_lQUqusuCYHvStzyD68M1paxrHITtjYbIMMeAu0zXYqQywzKzhNQToBvd9L86IDUIcVRcuK-9LmFw6mPMaoUuM2ttEX1z1yqCKBE2RcmaL0--IuB9lWsjbi-y8]
addresses several issues that the Commission is likely to consider, including:


* Public Safety - Many of the persons who will benefit from retroactivity will have
served many years in prison, far longer on average than persons convicted of powder
cocaine offenses. They are thus likely to be "aging out" of crime and can benefit
from reentry programming in the federal prison system.
* Consistency in Sentencing - The Commission has called for crack cocaine sentencing
reform since 1995, and therefore it is only proper to apply the amendment to persons
in prison, the vast majority of whom have been sentenced since that time.
* Racial Disparity - Since previous drug amendments which were more likely to benefit
whites and Hispanics were made retroactive, there would be serious concerns about
bias in the system if the crack amendment is not made retroactive. An estimated
85% of the persons who would benefit from such a policy are African American.
* Cost Issues - While there would be some additional court and corrections costs
associated with applying the amendment retroactively, these would be more than
offset by the long-term reduction in incarceration that would occur.

My testimony builds on a previous letter [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001EGi_ygjACROYCfLQMkX-Exe93poOnOgiheobVydk_W5Le78XMkFDJ1OrNn-VgkMzHShKPsv8OGg1ulKylW0sr0yM1dDUsYUCJMEfbZw1o96vFUm1yUh38UTeECXCJ4sjNABqL3CsLi6k3jrpnZvXLok2Vflzu1ouWjeKlaE7vINi5V-FddLP99R6V5hmgo5WzKjXqSCYEKQIwa1GbGh0G5e2oXfDJNCh]
we have sent to the Commission describing the rationale and feasibility for retroactivity.
And for more information on the issue, please see our web resources on crack cocaine
at www.sentencingproject.org/crackreform [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001EGi_ygjACRP4EjJyLn9JwNKUpnSUNqxIqSNifumkabDEqB0-c7OJkmSTEiUkDUz9roPSkN3owTrqDBiWdpsa0c3riibY7BEjzfPo-ZSs5Xhx5BHTqILQ6C_guQtbKbV23bwFkCsg0ZM=].

The hearing will take place from 9:30 - 4:30 on Tuesday, November 13th at Georgetown
University Law Center, 120 F St., NW, in the 12th Floor Conference Room of the Gewirz
Student Center.

I hope you find this information useful, and I will keep you posted on progress
in this area.


Regards,

Marc Mauer

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U. S. Prison system a costly failure

Prison System a Costly and Harmful Failure: Report

by Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON - The number of Americans in prison has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major justice-system overhaul.

The report released on Monday cites statistics and examples ranging from former vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby to a Florida woman’s two-year sentence for throwing a cup of coffee to make its case for reducing the U.S. prison population.

It recommends shorter sentences and parole terms, alternative punishments, more help for released inmates and decriminalizing recreational drugs as steps that would cut the prison population in half, save $20 billion a year and ease social inequality without endangering the public.

“President (George W.) Bush was right,” in commuting Libby’s perjury sentence this year, the report says. “But while he was at it, President Bush should have commuted the sentences of hundreds of thousands of Americans who each year have also received prison sentences for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to our society.”

The report was produced by the JFA Institute, a Washington criminal-justice research group, and its authors included eight criminologists from major U.S. public universities. It was funded by the Rosenbaum Foundation and financier George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Its recommendations run counter to broad U.S. public support for getting tough on criminals through longer, harsher sentences and to the Bush administration’s anti-drug stance.

SHIFTING ATTITUDES

But the report cites state and local trends such as medical-marijuana laws as signs attitudes toward punishment may be shifting.

More than 1.5 million people are now in U.S. state and federal prisons, and the number has risen each year from 196,429 in 1970, the report said. Another 750,000 people are in U.S. jails.

Although the U.S. crime rate declined in the 1990s and much of this decade, it is still about the same as in 1973, it said. But the prison population has soared because sentences have gotten longer and people who violate parole or probation are more likely to be imprisoned.

“There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer,” JFA President James Austin, a co-author of the report, said in a release.

The report said the prison population is projected to grow by another 192,000 in five years, at a cost of $27.5 billion to build and operate additional prisons.

At current rates, one-third of all black males, one-sixth of Latino males, and one in 17 white males will go to prison during their lives.

Women represent the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, the report said. The result is increased social and racial inequality.

“The massive incarceration of young males from mostly poor- and working-class neighborhoods, and the taking of women from their families and jobs, has crippled their potential for forming healthy families and achieving economic gains,” it said.

© 2007 Reuters

Drug Policy Changes

Sentences for crack offenses studied

Thousands of federal prisoners could be released soon

By Darryl Fears

The Washington Post

updated 12:20 a.m. ET, Tues., Nov. 13, 2007

An independent panel is considering reducing the sentences of inmates incarcerated in federal prisons for crack cocaine offenses, which would make thousands of people immediately eligible to be freed.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets guidelines for federal prison sentences, established more lenient guidelines this spring for future crack cocaine offenders. The panel is scheduled to consider today a proposal to make the new guidelines retroactive.

Should the panel adopt the new policy, the sentences of 19,500 inmates would be reduced by an average of 27 months. About 3,800 inmates now imprisoned for possession and distribution of crack cocaine could be freed within the next year, according to the commission's analysis. The proposal would cover only inmates in federal prisons and not those in state correctional facilities, where the vast majority of people convicted of drug offenses are held.

By far the largest number -- more than 1,400 -- of those who would be eligible for sentence reductions were convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which has jurisdiction over Northern Virginia and the Richmond area, according to an analysis done by the commission. Nearly 280 inmates convicted in federal courts in Maryland would be eligible, as well as almost 270 prisoners found guilty in the District of Columbia.

The commission is taking up one of the most racially sensitive issues of the two-decades-old war on drugs. Jurists and civil rights organizations have long complained that the commission's guidelines mandate more stringent federal penalties for crack cocaine offenses, which usually involve African Americans, than for crimes involving powder cocaine, which generally involve white people. The chemical properties of the drugs are the same, though crack is potentially more addictive.

Nearly 86 percent of inmates who would be affected by the change are black; slightly fewer than 6 percent are white. Ninety-four percent are men.

The commission's proposal does not change sentencing recommendations for powder cocaine.

Created in 1984 to bring more consistency to sentencing in federal courts, the commission has reduced sentences and made such decisions retroactive for offenses involving LSD, marijuana cultivation and the painkiller OxyContin. But none involved such a large number of inmates or so controversial a drug, or have had such racial implications.

‘Jeopardize community safety’
The Bush administration opposes the new plan, arguing that it would overburden federal courts and release potentially dangerous drug offenders. In a letter to the commission, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher wrote that the release of a large number of drug offenders "would jeopardize community safety and threatens to unravel the success we have achieved in removing violent crack offenders from high-crime neighborhoods."

But many federal judges, public defenders, parole officers and civil rights advocates favor the move, asserting that the penalties for crack cocaine charges have fallen disproportionately onto black people.

"Making the amendment retroactive will . . . help repair the image of the sentencing guidelines in communities of color," NAACP Chairman Julian Bond wrote to the commission. "It is cruel and arbitrary to fix this injustice for some, but not for others, solely because of the date they were sentenced."

Congress has the power to overturn the proposal, but it is unclear whether it will do so. Lawmakers had 180 days to reverse the commission's May 1 decision to effect more lenient sentences for individuals convicted in some crack-related offenses, and they took no action. Those changes in the guidelines took effect Nov. 1.

The commission, an agency in the judicial branch, consists of seven voting members, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. (The attorney general and the chairman of the U.S. Parole Commission are nonvoting members.) Three commissioners must be federal judges. Four current members were named by President Bush; the rest were tapped by President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Judicial disparity
In part, because of crack's relatively cheap price, most offenders are poor black people. As a result, some civil libertarians cite sentencing discrepancies as one reason for the explosion in the number of African Americans -- especially men -- behind bars.

Testifying before Congress earlier this year, the chairman of the sentencing commission, Ricardo H. Hinojosa, implored lawmakers to ease the crack guidelines. He said the racial differences between users of crack and powder cocaine created an unwarranted judicial disparity.

If the plan for retroactive reductions is adopted, inmates serving time for certain crack offenses can petition a judge for a hearing on whether they can be freed as a result of having their sentences reduced. A judge's decision can be appealed.

Richard L. Delonis, national president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, warned that retroaction would burden prosecutors and overwhelm U.S. marshals, who would have to resettle prisoners into halfway houses.

Among those challenging that argument are the committee on criminal law for the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Robert W. Pratt, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, said assertions that retroaction will result in "an avalanche of motions . . . are exaggerated." He added: "The courts' workloads should not stand in the way of achieving sentences in 'crack' cocaine cases that are proportionate, fair and serve the interests of justice."

Inmates who might benefit from the reductions include Lamont and Lawrence Garrison, African American twins and graduates of Howard University who were sent to prison for 19 years and 15 years, respectively, for distributing crack cocaine.

Lamont Garrison's sentence could be reduced by four years and his brother's by three years if the guidelines become retroactive, said Monica Pratt Raffanel, a spokeswoman for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group that has lobbied for changes to the sentencing guidelines.

"They've been gone for almost 10 years, and the crack in the door with this little change is good," said Karen Garrison, the twins' mother. "As far as the retroactivity, part of it is not to think nothing until I see it. They still have to go back to court. It's not as easy as it seems if it does become retroactive. You just have to do the right thing and hope you get something back."

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21763002/

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Sentences reduced for Crack Cocaine

Friends,

At a time of growing national concern about unequal treatment within the justice
system, the United States Sentencing Commission today lowered the Guideline sentences
for offenses involving crack cocaine, likely impacting 3,500 federally sentenced
defendants each year. Commission concerns about the excessive penalty structure
for crack cocaine offenses prompted the change that on average will reduce defendants'
sentences by 15 months.

The Commission sets an advisory guideline range that federal judges use when sentencing
defendants. Under the old range, average sentences for crack cocaine offenses were
121 months. Now the estimated average sentence will be 106 months. In May the Commission
recommended statutory reforms and proposed to Congress the amendment to decrease
the guideline offense level for crack cocaine offenses. The amendment went unchallenged
by Congress and therefore takes effect today. According to Commission analysis,
the modification would reduce the size of the federal prison population by 3,800
in 15 years. Such a reduction would result in savings of over $87 million, according
to The Sentencing Project.

This change, however, only addresses one aspect of the controversy surrounding crack
cocaine sentencing. The Commission is currently considering whether to apply the
amendment retroactively - a move that would make approximately 19,500 persons in
prison eligible for a reduced sentence. The Commission will hear testimony on this
issue at a Nov. 13 public hearing at which I will testify in favor of retroactivity.

In a submission to the Commission, The Sentencing Project argues that "the Commission,
courts, and commentators all have recognized the undue disparity caused by the Guidelines
since their inception. Thus, defendants who were incarcerated when the problems
with the crack Guidelines first became evident should also be granted an opportunity
to pursue the benefit of this long overdue remedy."

The new policy comes on the heels of oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court
in Kimbrough v. the United States. The high court is being asked to uphold the authority
of federal judges to depart from the sentencing guidelines in crack cocaine cases
when they disagree with sentencing policy.Furthermore, bipartisan reform legislation
is pending in Congress and hearings addressing the statutory mandatory minimum sentences
are expected this fall.

Use the following links to read The Sentencing Project's letter [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001eddgdBR1oT5iy7kgK6Z6fx9E6SBFsj9h2ziySaDYXMBmi7RugK_HbJ0-yTW3U5tKr0aUdRWBJD_a5JsT7bBtuQ9w3Mgxk8wL79JImyvEWB4SQgktKvlgQwlVi0av6Gt3Udg9Z022mDurYvQiQ0Woboa5o71jOMTDdsq_xxSPA8Op5rrwxZfXMgZrtdvGBaL3RAJjXo6bMmIUkCvsdcLyGg==]
to the Commission urging retroactivity, and learn more about the momentum to end
the sentencing disparity at: www.sentencingproject.org/crackreform [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001eddgdBR1oT5iy7kgK6Z6fx9E6SBFsj9h2ziySaDYXMBmi7RugK_HbJtwuTSzseRyNWmh38eybHDk1R5uY002dYOk9yNH1Y3FcmlypqkvBjKMfWalnfbdNcsER_K9Aie_].


Regards,

Marc Mauer

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