Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.
Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
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United States Sentencing Commission Approves Crack Reform for Federal Prisoners
The day after the Supreme Court affirmed a judge's decision to sentence below the guideline range based on the unfairness of the crack cocaine sentencing disparity, the United States Sentencing Commission today voted to make retroactive its recent guideline amendment on crack cocaine offenses. The USSC's decision, effective March 3, now makes an estimated 19,500 persons in prison eligible for a sentence reduction averaging more than two years. Releases are subject to judicial review and will be staggered over 30 years.
The Sentencing Project applauds the USSC for responding at this heightened time of public awareness about excessive penalties and disparate treatment within the justice system.
"The Commission's decision marks an important moment not only for the 19,500 people retroactivity will impact, but for the justice system as a whole," stated Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project. "Today's action, combined with the Court's decision yesterday, restores a measure of rationality to federal sentencing while also addressing the unconscionable racial disparities that the war on drugs has produced."
The Sentencing Project estimates that once the sentencing change is fully implemented, there will be a reduction of up to $1 billion in prison costs. Because African Americans comprise more than 80% of those incarcerated for crack cocaine offenses, the sentencing reform will also help reduce racial disparity in federal prisons.
--Statement by the The Sentencing Project
Now we just have to make certain that there are legal jobs available for these ex-offenders. Politicians find money for wars and prisons, but they never seem to have the money for job-creation in poor black communities.
Just One Small Step, Many Bigger Ones are Needed
Excerpts from Adam Liptak, "Whittling Away, but Leaving a Gap," New York Times, December 17, 2007The United States justice system remains, by international standards at least, exceptionally punitive. And nothing that happened last week will change that.
Unless Congress acts, many thousands of defendants will continue to face vastly different sentences for possessing and selling different types of the same thing.
Paul G. Cassell, an authority on sentencing who was until recently a federal trial judge, said the focus on the sentencing guidelines was in some ways a distraction.
"The mandatory minimums are so draconian," he said. "I'm a believer in a good guidelines system. And I would much rather trade a much tougher guidelines system and get rid of mandatory minimums."
The mandatory minimum sentence for crimes involving five grams of crack--a little more than a sugar packet--remains five years. For powder, the five-year mandatory sentence does not kick in until 500 grams, or more than a pound.
Fifty grams of crack equals a guaranteed 10 years. It takes five kilograms of powder to mandate the same sentence. Five kilos is a lot of cocaine.
Mere possession of a relatively small quantity of crack means a five-year sentence. Possessing five grams of powder cocaine usually results in probation, said Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group.
Indeed, the maximum sentence for simple possession of any drug but crack, including powder cocaine and heroin, is one year.
Eighty-five percent of people convicted of crack offenses are black.
In summary, the drug most associated with blacks receives the harshest punishment. Somebody ask Juan Williams why is that.
From Black Directions vol. 2, no. 5
Comparing Constructive and Destructive Crime PreventionHigh-Quality Pre-Kindergarten vs. Incarceration
On all measures, high-quality pre-kindergarten is a better crime prevention policy than incarceration. Civil rights activists must force elected officials to support constructive crime prevention.
[click on image below for a better view]
See “What’s Wrong with Incarceration” in this issue of Black Directions for a discussion of these points.Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.
--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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