Trend to Lighten Harsh Sentences Catches On in ...



[4 articles count as 1 rdg. for RDP’s and Rdgs Notes -- changes in imprisonment policy – lighter sentences & Supreme Court Ruling on Calif. Prison over-crowding]

Trend to Lighten Harsh Sentences Catches On in Conservative States

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

New York Times

August 12, 2011



WASHINGTON — Fanned by the financial crisis, a wave of sentencing and parole reforms is gaining force as it sweeps across the United States, reversing a trend of “tough on crime” policies that lasted for decades and drove the nation’s incarceration rate to the highest — and most costly — level in the developed world.

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The New York Times

While liberals have long complained that harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenses like drug possession are unjust, the push to overhaul penal policies has been increasingly embraced by elected officials in some of the most conservative states in the country. And for a different reason: to save money.

Some early results have been dramatic. In 2007, Texas was facing a projected shortfall of about 17,000 inmate beds by 2012. But instead of building and operating new prison space, the State Legislature decided to steer nonviolent offenders into drug treatment and to expand re-entry programs designed to help recently released inmates avoid returning to custody.

As a result, the Texas prison system is now operating so far under its capacity that this month it is closing a 1,100-bed facility in Sugar Land — the first time in the state’s history that a prison has closed. Texas taxpayers have saved hundreds of millions of dollars, and the changes have coincided with the violent crime rate’s dipping to its lowest level in 30 years.

“In Texas for the last few years we’ve been driving down both the crime rate and the incarceration rate,” said Marc Levin, the director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which helped draft the state’s corrections overhaul. “And it’s not just Texas. South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas and Ohio in the past year or so have done major reforms. These are certainly not liberal states. That is significant.”

More than a dozen states in recent years have taken steps to reduce the costs to taxpayers of keeping so many criminals locked up. As crime rates have steadily declined to 40-year lows, draining the political potency from crime fears, the fiscal crunch has started to prompt a broad rethinking about alternatives to incarceration.

The 1980s and 1990s saw a wave of stiff new sentencing laws, from mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession to California’s three-strikes law imposing an automatic life sentence for a third felony conviction. Partly as a result, the United States, with 5 percent of the world’s population, now accounts for 25 percent of the world’s inmates. Taxpayers are spending about $50 billion a year on state corrections systems — nearly twice as much, in inflation-adjusted terms, as expenditures in 1987, according to the Pew Center on the States.

Even before the financial crisis settled in, a handful of states, including New York, had begun experimenting with softening mandatory sentences for drug crimes, driven by a mix of concerns about effectiveness, fairness and cost. Texas, an early innovator, mandated probation for low-level possession of many drugs in 2003, before enacting its far more sweeping overhaul of incarceration policies in 2007.

But in the past two years, many more states have enacted — or are considering adopting in their 2012 legislative sessions — similar policies, including reducing prison time for low-level drug offenders or diverting them into treatment; granting early release to well-behaved or elderly inmates; expanding job training and re-entry programs; and instituting penalties other than a return to prison for technical violations of parole or probation, like missing a meeting.

At the federal level, Congress last year sharply reduced a steep and racially charged disparity in the sentences handed down for crack cocaine offenses when compared with those for powder cocaine. This summer, the federal Sentencing Commission voted to make some sentence reductions for crack offenses retroactive, allowing about 12,000 federal inmates to apply to a judge to reduce their sentences by an average of three years.

And in May the United States Supreme Court ordered California to reduce severe overcrowding in its prisons, pressuring more states to find ways to lock up fewer people if they do not want to pay what it takes to house swelling inmate populations humanely.

“Over the last few years there has been a dramatic shift in the policy and political landscape on the incarceration issues, and momentum is building,” said Adam Gelb, the director of a corrections policy project at the Pew Center on the States.

The movement has attracted the support of several prominent conservatives, including Edwin R. Meese III, the attorney general during the Reagan administration. He is part of a campaign, called “Right on Crime,” which was begun last December to lend weight to what it calls the “conservative case for reform.”

“I’d call it a careful refining of the process,” Mr. Meese said. “Most of us who are involved in this are very much in favor of high incarceration of serious habitual offenders. The whole idea is getting the right people in prison, and for those people for whom there is evidence that chances of recidivism are less, to work with those people.”

Other Republican affiliates of the group include former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Grover Norquist, an antitax activist; Asa Hutchinson, a former director of the Drug Enforcement Administration; and William J. Bennett, a former White House “drug czar.”

The movement has seen some reversals. At least three states — Washington, Kansas and Delaware — have cut spending on re-entry programs to help close short-term budget gaps, despite criticism that the cuts could result in higher long-term costs if more parolees returned to prison.

In addition, at least three other states — Illinois, New Jersey and Wisconsin — suspended or revoked programs that allowed well-behaved inmates to earn early parole. Earlier this year, for example, New Jersey repealed such a program after two former inmates who had been released early were charged with murders.

Vanita Gupta, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which published a report this week on the corrections overhaul movement, said that such setbacks showed the fragility of the effort. Ms. Gupta said statistics-based arguments had historically fared poorly in the political arena when countered by anecdotes of specific crimes.

She said it had taken the fiscal crisis to persuade a wider scope of policy makers to set aside such fears and examine the arguments that the United States could incarcerate fewer people without causing crime rates to rise.

“This is the first sustained opportunity we’ve had as a country to look at our incarceration policies, and it could end, so the work is urgent,” Ms. Gupta said.

Supreme Court: California's prison overcrowding is 'serious constitutional violation'

By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers

May 23, 2011



WASHINGTON — A closely divided Supreme Court on Monday cited “serious constitutional violations” in California’s overcrowded prisons and ordered the state to abide by aggressive plans to fix the problem.

In a decision closely watched by other states, the court by a 5-4 margin concluded the prison overcrowding violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Pointedly, the court rejected California’s bid for more time and leeway.

“The violations have persisted for years,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “They remain uncorrected.”

The court agreed that a prisoner-release plan devised by a three-judge panel is necessary in order to alleviate the overcrowding. The court also upheld the two-year deadline imposed by the three-judge panel.

“For years, the medical and mental health care provided by California’s prisons has fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements and has failed to meet prisoners’ basic health needs,” Kennedy wrote.

Driving the point home, the court’s majority made the highly unusual if not unprecedented move of including stark black-and-white photographs of a jam-packed room at Mule Creek State Prison and cages at Salinas Valley State Prison. Conservative dissenters, in turn, warned dire consequences will result.

“Today the court affirms what is perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history, an order requiring California to release the staggering number of 46,000 convicted felons,” Justice Antonin Scalia declared.

Eighteen states — including Texas, Alaska and South Carolina — explicitly supported California's bid for more leeway in reducing prison overcrowding. These states worry that they, too, might face court orders to release inmates.

California's 33 state prisons held about 147,000 inmates, at the time of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments last November. This is down from a high of some 160,000 previously cited in legal filings. The higher figure amounted to "190 percent of design capacity," officials said.

Last year, a three-judge panel ordered California to reduce its inmate population to 137.5 percent of design capacity within two years. That's the equivalent of about 110,000 inmates.

"California's prisons are bursting at the seams and are impossible to manage," the three-judge panel wrote. Even before the court ruled Monday, California officials began taking steps to cut the overcrowding.

Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed A.B. 109, which shifts to counties the responsibility for incarcerating many low-risk inmates. Up to 30,000 state prison inmates could be transferred to county jails over three years, under the bill; first, however, state officials must agree on a way to pay for it.

“The prison system has been a failure,” Brown stated when he signed the bill “Cycling (lower-level) offenders through state prisons wastes money, aggravates crowded conditions, thwarts rehabilitation and impedes local law enforcement supervision.”

The overcrowding leads to inhumane and constitutionally impermissible conditions, judges and monitors warn.

One hundred and twelve California prison inmates died unnecessarily due to inadequate medical care in 2008 and 2009, analysts found. Acutely ill patients have been held in “cages, supply closets and laundry rooms” because of overcrowding, investigators found. California prison inmate suicides have been double the national average.

California officials retorted that they deserve more time to act.

Reducing overcrowding doesn't necessarily mean that thousands of inmates will let loose. Alternatives include transferring some to other jurisdictions, diverting nonviolent inmates to jails and reforming parole so that fewer violators are returned to prison.

New rules slashing crack cocaine sentences go into effect[pic]

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NBy Carol Cratty, CNN

November 01, 2011

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For thousands of prison inmates convicted of crack cocaine charges, the prison doors will be opening early, thanks to sentencing changes easing the disparity between the penalties for possessing or distributing crack vs. powder cocaine.

Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act in August 2010, changing the 100-to-1 disparity between minimum sentences for crack and powder cocaine to 18 to 1. The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted this summer to make the reduced crack penalties retroactive, which means more than 12,000 current inmates are eligible to request reduced sentences.

The retroactivity took effect Tuesday. The Sentencing Commission estimates that inmates will have an average of three years chopped off their sentences. An estimated 1,800 inmates became eligible for release immediately because they had already served enough time, and prosecutors did not object to their release.

Critics of the old sentencing system say it was unfair to African-Americans, who make up the majority of those convicted of possessing and distributing crack.

"This really has been one of the great stains on our federal criminal justice system for 20 years or more," said Michael Nachmanoff, the federal public defender for the Eastern District of Virginia. "This disparity between the punishment for crack cocaine and powder was really unjustified."

Nachmanoff noted under the old guidelines someone who had just 5 grams of crack cocaine would receive a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. But someone would have to have 500 grams of powdered cocaine to receive a similar sentence.

"A lot of people have been sitting in jail for a long time not because they didn't commit crimes, but because the punishment they faced was too harsh and unjustified compared to other people who had committed similar crimes in similar ways," Nachmanoff told CNN. He said reduced sentences will not be automatic. Judges must review the cases and determine whether an early release of an inmate represents a danger to the community.

[Dunn cut a couple paragraphs for space reasons]

But even with the changes, there is still an 18-to-1 disparity in sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses. Nachmanoff said now a person with crack will have to have 28 grams before triggering a mandatory five-year minimum sentence. But the person with powder cocaine still must have a much larger amount -- at least 500 grams.

"Ultimately the right answer is 1 to 1, and people in the law enforcement community and the criminal justice system recognize that," said Nachmanoff. "But that just means that there's still more work to do."

Man gets 30 years in drug plea

By Sharahn D. Boykin

Daily Times (Salisbury, MD)

August 31, 2011

SALISBURY -- A city man was sentenced to three decades in prison after he pleaded guilty to crack cocaine possession with intent to distribute during a Circuit Court hearing this week.

After waiving his right to a criminal jury trial, Donzel Haywood Henry, a 47-year-old Catherine Street man, pleaded guilty to the charge as part of an agreement with the state.

"We're doing our best to deter drug dealing in Wicomico County," said Wicomico State's Attorney Matthew Maciarello. "If we have a strong case against a subsequent offender, we will be filing for enhanced penalties against the offender. This case is an example of the prosecution of a repeat offender."

The arrest marked Henry's most recent drug-related conviction, according to the State's Attorney's Office. He was convicted of felony cocaine possession with intent to distribute on Dec. 4, 1991, in New Jersey and was placed on probation for three years.

The state requested enhanced penalties during sentencing because of Henry's prior drug-related arrest.

More recently, Henry was taken into custody in April following a traffic stop by Maryland State Police near Arlington Road -- a designated Safe Streets area, according to prosecutors. During a search of his vehicle, a trooper discovered a dozen small bags of suspected crack cocaine totaling 1.7 grams.

Henry was released from the Wicomico County Detention Center on $25,000 bond the same day he was taken into custody.

Four months later, Henry was also arrested in Worcester County. He was charged with marijuana possession, drug possession not marijuana, drug possession with intent to distribute and narcotic possession with intent to distribute on Aug. 14.

A District Court preliminary hearing in which a judge will determine if there is probable cause is scheduled for mid-September.

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