The War on Drugs

The insanity of mandatory minimum sentences and the resulting flood of petty offenders filling up US prisons (largely the poor who cannot afford good lawyers) will one day be looked at the same way we look at the Gulags of the Soviet Union (see my previous post entitled "The Land of the Free?"). Thanks to Lara for forwarding this facinating article. Her quote is from a ways down in the article, about 4/5 of the way.

Curry, who had been driving Brown's car, in which a one-pound rock of crack was hidden, imagined he would pay a price; he imagined he would serve a short jail sentence and then be given a chance to atone for the sins of his naivete. He had no criminal record. One FBI agent called him a "flunky."

But there were federal laws, hurriedly passed by Congress, and those laws decreed that drug offenders were subject to mandatory minimum sentences, and those who trafficked in crack were especially susceptible. Despite sympathy from a judge who could do nothing to help him, Derrick Curry was sentenced to 19 years and seven months in prison for his role in a drug conspiracy under laws that had been passed in the summer of 1986, in the midst of an unprecedented cry for reform in the wake of the death of Leonard K. Bias.

For starters, "a one-pound rock of crack"!!!??? I had no idea a rock of crack could attain that dimension. The catch 22 in US politics is that to stand up and say "mandatory sentences are nuts, we need to change how we solve our drug abuse problem" is to be called weak on crime, your odds of being elected diminish greatly. As they were passing the laws that sentenced Curry, the legislators knew it was crazy, but if pressed would all quickly add "of course I'm for it".

Amid the fury and panic and ignorance, amid what Sterling calls a "legislative frenzy," Congress acted in a bipartisan fashion, passing the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. One Oklahoma legislator admitted it was "out of control," but added, "of course I'm for it." The law established mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders; it also decreed that possession or sale of 1/100th of an amount of crack cocaine as compared to powder cocaine (5 grams versus 500 grams) would trigger those mandatory minimum sentences.

Fortunately it looks as though the tide is slowly ebbing, bi partisan bills are beining to be brought forward. Slowly, slowly the situation will redress, in a decade or two, amid the ruins of litterally millions of US citizens who have spent time in prisons, and live with criminal records.
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