PEOPLE INCARCERATED ON NON-VIOLENT DRUG CHARGES ARE A BIT CLOSER TO GETTING OUT OF FEDERAL PRISON YEARS EARLY. CLEMENCY IS NOW ON THE TABLE FOR SOME DRUG OFFENDERS

Deputy Attorney General James Cole announced that the department would broaden the criteria for clemency, a move that is expected to lead to thousands of prisoners — most serving drug sentences — filing applications to President Barack Obama seeking to commute their sentences.

The changes are part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to modify sentencing laws, allowing for use of rehabilitation and other alternatives to deal with non-violent drug offenders and those who previously faced tough mandatory minimum sentences.

Attorney General Eric Holder previewed some of the changes Monday by announcing plans to assign more lawyers to handle an anticipated flood of clemency requests.

Clemency changes to free drug offenders

Obama commutes 8 crack cocaine cases

Obama commutes 8 crack sentences

Crack cocaine at heart of once-common sentencing disparity

“We are launching this clemency initiative in order to quickly and effectively identify appropriate candidates, candidates who have a clean prison record, do not present a threat to public safety, and were sentenced under out-of-date laws that have since been changed, and are no longer seen as appropriate,” Cole said at a news conference.

The clemency changes would be open to prisoners who have met a set of specific conditions: they must be low-level, non-violent offenders without a significant criminal history and must be serving a federal sentence that would likely be shorter if they were convicted today. They must have served at least 10 years of their sentence and have demonstrated good conduct in prison, with no history of violence before or during their prison term.

The pending changes are the latest step in an ongoing effort Holder calls “Smart on Crime,” which also seeks to remedy the once-common wide disparity in sentences handed down over powder versus crack cocaine, based on guidelines first enacted by Congress more than 25 years ago.

Earlier: Eric Holder seeks to cut mandatory minimum drug sentences

Of the more than 200,000 inmates in the federal prison system, some estimates show the new clemency criteria could apply to about 2,000 prisoners. But the number is likely to fall to perhaps hundreds after government lawyers review the applications.

The Justice Department says it doesn’t know how many people will end up qualifying because it depends on the applications and how they fit the new criteria. The President has final authority to decide who gets clemency.

Obama has been criticized by some civil rights groups for being stingy with his pardons and commutations. But many praised the Justice Department’s decision as a good initial step, including a coalition of groups working on sentencing guidelines.

The announcement “marks the beginning of the end of the age of mass incarceration,” said Jerry Cox, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “We must seize this historic opportunity to start the process of remedying decades of cruel and unnecessarily harsh sentencing policies.”

Cole also announced the appointment of Deborah Leff to lead the department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which has come under fire for being slow to review a backlog of applications.

Cole said the department was setting up an online application system and working with pro-bono attorneys who will assist prisoners in their applications.

Mary Price, general counsel for the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which advocates for changes to drug sentencing laws, welcomed Cole’s announcement. “The doors of the Office of the Pardon Attorney have been closed to petitioners for too long. This announcement signals a truly welcome change; the culture of ‘no’ that has dominated that office is being transformed,” she said.

The push to relax sentencing laws has the support of some conservative Republican lawmakers, who believe it is a way to reduce spending on federal prisons and to use alternatives to incarceration to deal with drug problems. However, lawmakers want the changes to be made through Congress rather than through the president’s executive power.

“I hope President Obama is not seeking to change sentencing policy unilaterally. Congress, not the President, has authority to make sentencing policy. He should continue to work with Congress rather than once again going it alone, and I’m willing to work with the President on these issues.” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said this week.

Cole, in his remarks Wednesday, said the issue is one of fairness. “Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today’s laws erode people’s confidence in our criminal justice system, and I am confident that this initiative will go far to promote the most fundamental of American ideals — equal justice under law,” Cole said.

Three years ago, Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act to address the larger issue of drug sentencing disparities. Sentencing guidelines provided for a 100-to-1 ratio between the penalties for crack cocaine offenses versus those for powdered cocaine, but the fair sentencing law reduced the disparity to 18-to-1.

 

The U.S. Sentencing Commission recently voted to apply reduced drug penalties retroactively to over 46,000 people serving excessive sentences for federal drug offenses — potentially reducing average prison terms by two years.

The vote reflects a historic shift in the nation’s approach to substance abuse. There’s an emerging consensus among both Republicans and Democrats that using the criminal justice system to address substance abuse is both too expensive and doesn’t work in terms of promoting public safety.  Policymakers of both parties are increasingly recognizing that the war on drugs has come at a ruinous cost for all Americans, but particularly for communities of color.

THE UNITED STATES SENTENCING COMMISSION VOTED TO LET 46,290 FEDERAL PRISONS APPLY TO GET OUT OF PRISON SOONER!

The United States Sentencing Commission just voted to let 46,290 federal prisoners apply to get out of prison sooner. The vote applied the Sentencing Commission’s latest reductions in federal sentencing guidelines, APPROVED IN APRIL, to people currently serving sentences in federal prison for drug crimes.

Prisoners will begin to be released on November 1, 2015.

Prisoners will have to apply to get their sentences reduced, and each application will be reviewed, individually, by a federal judge. (One of the reasons that the Sentencing Commission decided not to start releasing prisoners until November 2015 was to give federal judges more time to work through the applications they’re going to receive.) The judge is responsible for deciding whether or not releasing the applicant would be dangerous for public safety, and whether the applicant deserves to have his or her sentence reduced.

If you have loved ones currently incarcerated on drug charges contact us at : streetjustice13@gmail.com to discuss what needs to be done to see if the new law will affect their sentence.

Maestr0

CRACK COCAINE

One in every 20 federal prisoners could be eligible for early release under a potential sentencing change to be voted on Thursday for inmates convicted of crack cocaine offenses.

Congress passed a law last year substantially lowering recommended sentences for people convicted of crack cocaine crimes, ranging from possession to trafficking. The idea was to fix a longstanding disparity in punishments for crack and powder cocaine crimes, but the new, lower recommended sentences for crack offenders didn’t automatically apply to people already in prison. Now the six-member U.S. Sentencing Commission must decide whether offenders locked up for crack offenses before the new law took effect should benefit and get out earlier.

Up to 12,000 of the roughly 200,000 people incarcerated in federal prisons nationwide could be affected. A report by the commission estimates that the average sentence reduction would be approximately three years, though a judge would still have to approve any reduction.

“There is a tremendous amount of hope out there,” said Mary Price, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group for prisoners and their relatives. “There is a potential that people could see their sentences reduced, for some quite dramatically.”

At a meeting in early June, commissioners suggested they wanted to apply the lower recommended sentences to at least some past offenders, but it is unclear how many. Advocacy groups have asked for the widest possible application. But a group of 15 Republican lawmakers from the House and Senate wrote the commission saying the Fair Sentencing Act passed by Congress last year was not intended to benefit any past offenders.

At the June hearing, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder took the middle road. He expressed support for making the new, lower guideline sentences retroactive but suggested limits on who should be eligible. Holder said prisoners who used weapons when committing crimes or who have significant criminal histories should not be eligible. If the commission adopts that view it could cut in half the number of prisoners who would stand to benefit from 12,000 to approximately 6,000.

Any decision about who should be eligible for a reduced sentence will have to be approved by four of the commission’s six members, who include judges and former prosecutors. Once the commission votes, Congress has until the end of October to reject or modify the guidelines, though that is considered unlikely.

If the commission does decide to lower recommended sentences, the reductions would not be automatic. A lawyer, the overwhelming majority of them public defenders, would file paperwork in court for the prisoner seeing a reduction, and the reduction would have to be approved by a judge. Prisoners would not necessarily have to appear in court, but prosecutors would also weigh in. The earliest prisoners could start petitioning to have their sentence reduced would be November, assuming Congress does not act.

The measure the commission will consider making retroactive changed a 1986 law, enacted at a time when crack cocaine use was rampant and the drug was involved in a wave of violent crime, under which a person convicted of crack cocaine possession got the same mandatory prison term as someone with 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine. The legislation reduced that ratio to about 18-1. The disparity disproportionately affects minorities — some 80 percent of those convicted of crack cocaine offenses are black.

According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, applying the change to those currently serving prison sentences for crack offenses could lead to major savings for taxpayers.

The group says the current annual per-person cost of incarceration is more than $28,000, and that retroactivity would allow for an average sentence reduction of 37 months. If all 12,040 people who would potentially be affected received the average sentence reduction, it would save taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next 30 years.