The Fair Sentencing Act

Although some victims of this type of abuse took legal action and attested that the war on drugs is racially unjust, their claims were rejected and disregarded by the court. “The Supreme Court has made it virtually impossible to challenge racial bias in the criminal justice system under the Fourteenth Amendment, and it has barred litigation of such claims under federal civil rights laws as well.” (Alexander 106) For instance in the McCleskey vs. Kemp case, the real matter in question was whether the court would permit racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. The sentence given to McCleskey was the Court’s reply, “racial bias would be tolerated––virtually to any degree––as long as no one admitted it.” (Alexander 107) So in reality, the Supreme Court has sanctioned racial bias in the criminal justice system and policing instead of opting for rules prohibiting it.

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past forty years, and many Americans today tend to believe that the high levels of incarceration in our country stem from factors such as racism, socioeconomic differences, and drugs. While these factors have contributed to the incarceration rate present in our country today, I argue that the most important reason our country has such a high incarceration rate is the policy changes that have occurred since the 1970s. During this time, the United States has enacted policy changes that have produced an astounding rise in the use of imprisonment for social control. These policy changes were enacted in order to achieve greater consistency, certainty, and severity and include sentencing laws such as determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three strikes laws (National Research Council 2014). Furthermore, I argue that mandatory sentencing has had the most significant effect on the incarceration rate.

Prior to studying sociology and public policy, I was very uninformed and oblivious to the injustices that black people were facing in regards to drug charges. These injustices were disguised under President Reagan’s War on Drugs, but were used disproportionately to discriminate against African Americans and label them as felons, thus revoking them of any ability to receive government assistance, find adequate housing, or to be a suitable candidate for many jobs. These forms of social control, while legal, are very reminiscent of the Jim Crow laws that existed post-Reconstruction.

In 1982 the crack epidemic started, which shortly after Ronald Reagan expanded the war on drugs that Nixon started, one of his top aides admitted that the war on drugs was used to “target African Americans and hippies”. The number of incarcerations before the war on drugs was expanded in 1980 was four thousand seven hundred forty-nine for drug related crimes, in 1990 that number increased to twenty-four thousand two hundred ninety-seven, sixty percent of those incarcerations were African Americans (sentencingproject.org). If you were caught with one gram of crack you got the same sentencing as someone found with eighteen grams of cocaine, it was policies like these that targeted lower income black communities because crack was much cheaper than cocaine and was more likely for a white person to have cocaine.

The concept of mandatory sentencing is a relatively new idea in the legal field. It was first introduced in 1951 with the Boggs Act, and it made simple marijuana possession a minimum of two to ten years with a $20,000 fine. This was eventually repealed by Congress in 1970, but mandatory sentences came back with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Since then, the scope and presence of mandatory sentencing has only grown, especially mandatory sentences for drug related offenses. Recently, there has been a growing concern over the use and implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing, with many believing it reduces a judge’s ability to give out a sentence that they feel accordingly fits the crime. Many advocates for mandatory

The War on Drugs was the United Sates government’s attempt to stop the sale and use of illegal drug use. It consisted of anti-drug legislation all with the plan to end drug abuse in America. President Nixon declared and coined the phrase “War on drugs” and increased drug control agencies and pushed for harder sentencing for drug offenses. The war on drugs is an issue that we are still fighting and many of the policies put in place did more harm than good. The drug war affected all people, but it had unequal outcomes for different racial groups and many of the historical pieces of legislation put in place impacted these outcomes and are still affecting many people of color today.

It was not just minorities of course, whites were involved just as much, but it was the minorities being policed at a much higher rate. It was much easier to police the urban areas because the flow of drugs was easier to spot. “Visible drug dealing and easily arrested dealers are disproportionately to be found in disorganized minority communities in the inner city” (Tonry p. 186). This lead to an easy way to create scapegoats for drug use offenders. The result of these drug offenses were making penalties much more severe. By creating more laws protecting citizens from abusing drugs, the goal behind this logic was to manipulate behavior of offenders. Making penalties more severe barely had any effects on drug users. Those who wanted the help to wean off of drugs had no help from social institutions. “At no time during the Ragan-Bush War on Drugs was treatment on demand available for all cocaine and heroin addicts who wanted it” (Malign Neglect p 187). One of the solutions to the multiple drug offenders was to not concentrate on replaceable drug dealers but rather to go after the manufactures, importers and major distributors because these positions are harder to come by than that of a drug dealer.

What has society done about reforming sentencing laws in order to reduce the incarceration population? The fair sentencing Act which was signed by president Obama has helped reduce the number of inmates impacted by mandatory minimum sentencing by “reducing the disparity in the amounts of powder cocaine and crack cocaine required for the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences and eliminates the mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine, it also increases penalties for major drug traffickers” (White House 2010). What the Act did was changed the ratio of Crack cocaine v Cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1 (U. S. Department of Justice 2010). This Act is beneficial because it

Statistical elaboration has shown that decreasing the prison population does not affect the well being of the community. Diminishing overcrowding within our jails should be of great importance for state administrations. Our President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into effect in 2010. The method must be two-fold: first, understand how the Fair Sentencing Act works, and second, put a greater emphasis on the recommendations given in reducing the disparity in sentencing.

The classical perspective founded by Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham; stated that at people choose to commit crime after they considered the pros and cons that could be associated with a crime, and believed that the pros outweighed the cons (Tonry,2014). The theory relied on deterring criminal acts by assuring that the consequences of crime are absolute, harsh, and quickly administered (Tonry,2014).

Even though drug laws are shown to be neutral and have no targeted audience, it can be implied that the War on Drugs was set in place to have Blacks arrested at an alarming rate to. African-Americans also have a disproportionately high

The Sentencing Reform Act is associated with the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, were the U.S. federal statute increased the consistency in the United States federal sentencing. The Sentencing Reform Act created the United States Sentencing Commission. This act allowed the independent commission into the judicial branch of the United States Sentencing Commission. It consists of seven voting members and one nonvoting member. For the sake of the United States Sentencing Commission, there are regulations that establish sentencing policies and practices for the Federal criminal justice system, which ensures a meeting of the purposes of sentencing. Judges are also bestowed the power to determine the legitimacy of convictions. The aspiration of the Sentence Reform Act was to avoid unwarranted sentencing disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar criminal conduct Also to allow the Judicial system to process....

beyond reasonable doubt. This stage is extremely important as it not only determines what punishment will be imposed upon the convict but also decides the deterrent effect it will have on potential sex offenders. In India, a uniform sentencing policy does not exist, as neither the legislature nor the judiciary has supplied any formal guidelines. However, the need for the same has been repeatedly recognized by both. For instance, the Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System (Malimath Committee) published its report in March 2003, stating the need for uniform sentencing guidelines:

Crime takes place through oppressive structures such as white domination, and can take root existentially in people’s personal lives. Racism has a long history of perpetuating itself through political, economic, national, educational and other institutions that are much larger, so to speak, than any individual. Yet part of the way that these institutions are able so effectively to privilege white people and exploit non-white people is through the development of individual attachments and commitments to them. It is a fact that drug legislation is a racially motivated social construct which is there to place non-whites in prison. It would be presumptuous to assume that there aren’t any good intentions of drug legislation, but when the government decides to “crack down” on one drug more so than another, they are unconsciously saying that the group of people with possession of a certain drug has a tendency to do more evil. If the government changed legislature to seek out abusers of prescription drugs, it would be certain that there would be more non-colored citizens in jail. Unfortunately for people of a non-white heritage, new legislation will probably never even make it to the floors of congress against prescription drugs because it is an assumption that they aren’t

Circles were found by the Native American cultures of the United States and Canada. These circles are used for many purposes. In the 1980s, the criminal justice system adapted and developed as the people of a first nation. Local justice officials had attempted to start building closer ties with the community and formal justice system. Going into 1991, Judge Barry introduced the “sentencing circle.” The sentencing circle means that the justice process will be shared with the community. The best-known sentencing circles were called the “Hollow Water First Nations Community Holistic Healing Circle.” The members of the community would gather around to deal with a high level of alcoholism. These circles represented a safe zone. Many had begun to