U.S. Sentencing Commission

02/14/2012

Promising Beginnings: States Provide a Model for Federal Criminal Justice Reform

By Dan Zeidman, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:00pm

In his 2007 State of the State address, Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) aptly explained, “I believe we can take an approach to crime that is both tough and smart…[T]here are thousands of non-violent offenders in the system whose future we cannot ignore. Let’s focus more resources on rehabilitating those offenders so we can ultimately spend less money locking them up again.”

Gov. Perry is just one voice in the chorus of policymakers, from both sides of the political aisle, calling for serious criminal justice reform that promotes public safety, reduces unsustainable prison populations and saves scarce taxpayer dollars. Elected officials like Gov. Perry are beginning to put their money where their mouths are by passing reform legislation to address overincarceration.

02/10/2012

Sentencing Reform

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 12:40pm

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.

02/03/2012

Fair Sentencing Act

Threat to Current Sentencing Law Looms: Are We Headed Back to Mandatory Guidelines?

By Sandhya Bathija, Washington Legislative Office at 5:43pm

The debate over sentencing guidelines is about to heat up in Congress, according to a recent report by NPR. In a story that ran on Tuesday’s Morning Edition, Carrie Johnson reports that some GOP members of Congress aren’t happy with the current state of federal sentencing guidelines.

For decades, mandatory sentencing guidelines forced judges to hand down harsh and unfair sentences that did not always fit the offender and unnecessarily flooded our prisons. This included the mandatory sentencing scheme that unequally punished comparable offenses involving crack and powder cocaine at a ratio of 100:1 and resulted in racially biased sentencing.

11/17/2011

Sentencing Disparity

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer Gets It (Half) Right

By Dan Zeidman, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:57pm

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer has a lot to say on our country’s criminal system – some good, some bad.

That was clear from a speech he made Tuesday to the American Lawyer/National Law Journal Summit that discussed the serious challenges facing sentencing and corrections policy in the United States. In his remarks, Breuer raised concerns about how we help formerly incarcerated individuals become productive members of society, as well as what he understands to be disparities in how people are sentenced in the federal system.

11/01/2011

Crack Sentencing

Chance at Freedom: Retroactive Crack Sentence Reductions For Up to 12,000 May Begin Today

By Jesselyn McCurdy, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:11pm

Today, Hamedah Hasan can finally apply for her freedom.

Hamedah has been locked up for 18 years serving a prison sentence she never deserved.

When she was 21 years old, she and her two daughters escaped an abusive relationship to live with her cousin. Feeling indebted to this cousin, who was involved in dealing crack cocaine, she agreed to run various errands and transfer money. Though Hamedah never used drugs herself, she was later indicted and convicted for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. Despite a previously clean record, the judge had no choice but to issue a life sentence, due to mandatory minimums for crack cocaine and the mandatory sentencing guidelines then on the books.

10/13/2011

U.S. Sentencing Commission

Mandatory Sentencing Is Not the Answer

By Jesselyn McCurdy, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:03am

Hamedah Hasan, a 43-year-old mother and grandmother, continues to languish in prison. She is 18 years into a 27-year prison sentence for a first-time nonviolent crack offense. Though the Nebraska judge who heard her case didn't want to give such a harsh sentence, he said he saw no way to sentence her to a shorter term under the mandatory federal sentencing guidelines at the time.

06/29/2011

War on Drugs

A Call for Fairness

By Dan Zeidman, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:03pm

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.

American Civil Liberties Union