Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.
By Will Matthews, ACLU of Northern California at 1:19pm
Borrowed from the British monarchy and codified in the United States Constitution after lively debate at the Philadelphia Convention, the power of pardon and commutation was bestowed upon American presidents because of the recognition that injustices can and do occur in our criminal justice system.
An example of those injustices is the unfair and racially biased 18-to-one crack-cocaine sentencing disparity, which was reduced last year from 100-to-one after Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act. The disparity has contributed to hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders, a disproportionate number of whom, like Hamedah Hasan, are people of color, serving indefensibly long sentences behind bars.
By Donna Lieberman, New York Civil Liberties Union at 4:02pm
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has issued a directive ordering officers to stop arresting people for misdemeanor marijuana possession when the pot only becomes "public" because an officer has searched a person or directed the person to empty his or her pockets.
By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 3:29pm
Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we’ll feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks
By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 1:08pm
June 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world's largest incarcerator. Throughout the month, check back daily for posts about the drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.
Joint Effort? Barney Frank, Ron Paul Team Up on Marijuana Bill
This unlikely bipartisan duo teamed up to introduce a bill that would leave it up to the states to set their own marijuana policies, limiting the federal government’s ability to interfere with the state’s ability to legalize, regulate, tax, and control marijuana.
Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.
By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 11:47am
Olympics season is upon us, and there’s no shortage of news in which the United States is heralded as the global frontrunner. Beyond athletics, America tends to pride itself on being innovative and forward-thinking on many issues of law and policy, professing to set an example for the rest of the world. But when it comes to our stagnant approach to drug policy, other countries have surpassed us repeatedly by leaps and bounds. From Portugal to Switzerland to Guatemala, it’s as if the rest of the world aced a public health class that the United States skipped because it was too busy fighting a failed, costly “war on drugs.”
Two recent elections, a New York judge’s personal plea, a new state law and a new public opinion poll demonstrate that a seismic national shift has occurred in political attitudes toward medical marijuana. This cascade of developments dramatically illustrates just how far we’ve come since California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, and it indicates that our collective compassion is eroding the once-ironclad political will to deny an effective medicine to our sick fellow citizens.
By Michael Macleod-Ball, Chief of Staff, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 7:31pm
The first spending bill for the new fiscal year that starts in October was adopted by the House of Representatives today after a week of wrangling. H.R. 5326 will provide funding for the Departments of Justice and Commerce as well as several science agencies – the so-called Commerce Justice Science (CJS) bill. If you listened to some in the majority, you would have thought the floor debate – which under an open rule allowed for unlimited amendments – provided a ripe opportunity for adding measures to cut spending, presumably the mantra in this time of fiscal austerity and Tea Party dominance. But some conservative writers, like those at Red State, note that cutting spending falls way down on the list of political priorities.
