10 The Hampton Roads Messenger
Lawmakers Reconsider Mandatory Minimum Prison Terms
BY STACY M. BROWN WASHINGTON
-- Ordered to prison on wire fraud charges, Andrea James embraced her 12-year-old daughter and five-month-old son before goodbye years.
saying for two A rude
awakening and a harsh reality check awaited James, a disgraced lawyer, as prison officials escorted her to her new home: a small cell block where she’d bunk with other women of the same skin color.
“No one really told me about the
injustices until I became incarcerated,” said James, 49. “What I encountered as a black woman walking into prison
was heartbreaking because all I saw were black women, many of whom had never even received a parking ticket before but ran into a little trouble because they made a decision, a tough decision, on how they were going to feed their babies.”
James, who grew up in Northeast and practiced law for nearly a
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Volume 8 Number 9
decade in New England before her incarceration, has fought vigorously to end mandatory minimum sentences since her release in 2011.
Her “Justice Roundtable” group,
which works to reform the U.S. Justice System, meets monthly at locations around the District.
They’ve planned a “Free Her”
rally scheduled to take place on the National
Mall on Saturday, June 21, where James said thousands of individuals
are expected to attend
with the hopes of putting pressure on lawmakers and the Obama administration to reconsider policies surrounding mandatory
minimums,
particularly the incarceration of blacks and minorities, who make up the overwhelming majority of the nation’s prison population.
“People, including those in the black community, have a distorted view of who is in prison,” said James, who penned the 2013 book, “Upper Bunkies Unite: And Other Thoughts on the Politics of Mass Incarceration.”
“They really don’t understand
what’s happened in this country because of the ‘War on Drugs’ and what that really meant,” she said.
Research on Globalization in Canada revealed
A study by the Center that
Today, nearly half for the U.S. houses 2
million, primarily black, inmates in state, federal and private prisons.
of African-
American men who grow up in the U.S. are arrested at least once by their 23rd birthday, Center for Research on Globalization officials said.
Further, African-American women in the U.S. receive sentences
that
are 480 percent harsher
May 2014 than
affluent white males who commit similar offenses.
Ironically, the death of famed Maryland basketball
superstar
Len Bias led lawmakers to impose mandatory minimum prison sentences, particularly for drug offenses.
Boston
Bias, just 22, and drafted by the Celtics,
died Democrats of quickly a cocaine
overdose on June 19 1986. Bias’ death politicized the drug debate that year.
pushed
through a bill that introduced mandatory minimum sentences, taking away any discretion judges previously held.
want a drug bill, I want it in four weeks,’”
“You had [lawmakers] said
Eric E.
president of the nonprofit Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in
said Sterling, 62. “Numbers were picked
“It set off kind of a stampede,” out
of mandatory the air. minimum,
Ten-year routine
sentences are 15, 20, 30 years without parole. Then you have conspiracy, and suddenly you have people facing 50 years, people facing either life in virtual terms or as a real sentence.”
Fifteen thousand federal drug cases are brought before the court each year and the bulk of them are mandatory minimum cases
despite
most of them being minor offenders, Sterling said.
“Only 10 percent of all federal
drug cases are high-level traffickers,” he said. “You have drugless drug cases.
PRISON TERMS PAGE 14 CIAA CHAMPIONSHIP PAGE 11
say, ‘I Sterling, Silver
Spring, Maryland, who served as counsel to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary from 1979 to 1989.
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