cannabisnews.com: Obama’s Calling for Sentencing Reform
function share_this(num) {
 tit=encodeURIComponent('Obama’s Calling for Sentencing Reform');
 url=encodeURIComponent('http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/28/thread28628.shtml');
 site = new Array(5);
 site[0]='http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+url+'&title='+tit;
 site[1]='http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit.php?url='+url+'&title='+tit;
 site[2]='http://digg.com/submit?topic=political_opinion&media=video&url='+url+'&title='+tit;
 site[3]='http://reddit.com/submit?url='+url+'&title='+tit;
 site[4]='http://del.icio.us/post?v=4&noui&jump=close&url='+url+'&title='+tit;
 window.open(site[num],'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,width=620,height=500');
 return false;
}






Obama’s Calling for Sentencing Reform
Posted by CN Staff on July 14, 2015 at 08:10:50 PT
By Juliet Eilperin
Source: Washington Post
Washington, D.C. -- As President Obama prepares to make the case Tuesday afternoon for overhauling the nation’s criminal justice system, bipartisan legislation in the House and initiatives on the state level have started to gain traction. But will that be enough to usher a sweeping change in federal sentencing rules into law? It depends on whom you ask.After holding nearly a year and-a-half of field hearings Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.) introduced The Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective (SAFE) Justice Act late last month, a comprehensive measure that would impose mandatory minimum sentences on higher-level drug traffickers rather than low-level offenders; apply life sentences for drug trafficking only in extreme cases; and allow eligible offenders to petition for resentencing under new trafficking laws.
The measure already has 30 co-sponsors, equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. Sensenbrenner said in an interview Monday he has a simple strategy for ensuring House GOP leaders hold a vote of the bill: “Getting overwhelming bipartisan support. They can count votes as well as I can.”The fact that several congressional Republicans in both chambers are engaged in the issue—including not just Sensenbrenner and several House colleagues but also Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Tim Scott (S.C.) — explains the White House’s cause for optimism. Asked Monday why the president believes reform of the nation’s criminal justice system is possible, White House press secretary Josh Earnest replied, “Well, to be blunt about it, because Republicans are indicating an openness to doing it.”But not all Republicans — including Senate Judiciary Committee Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) — have shown quite the same openness to adopting some of the measures that most advocates see as part of a broad reform package. Grassley has been negotiating with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and a handful of other committee members for two months. On Monday he said, “there are three or four items that have to be settled yet," without detailing the outstanding issues.During a hearing last week where Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates engaged in a back-and-forth with the panel’s ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) about the administration’s support for a bipartisan bill that died in the Senate last year, Grassley made it clear he was prepared to move without the backing of Democrats if need be.“I want everybody to know that we're working hard on getting a sentencing reform compromise that we can introduce,” he said. “And if we don't get one pretty soon, I'll probably have my own ideas to put forward.”Several lawmakers and aides said they are eager for the president to specify what he would or would not accept in a sentencing bill, in order to propel the discussion. Scott said in an interview “it would be helpful” if the Justice Department endorsed the bill he and Sensenbrenner crafted, adding that since they solicited the department’s input during the hearing process, “we are hopeful that everybody’s going to singing off the same sheet of music.”Advocates, for their part, said they were confident recent action on the state level had many lawmakers from several states more comfortable with the idea of shifting away from the sort of criminal enforcement tactics that became popular in late 1980s and early 90s. A coalition of liberal and conservative groups have coalesced around the need to cut the amount of spending on prisons and direct money instead to drug and alcohol treatment centers.Marc Levin, who directs the Right on Crime initiative at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, noted that conservative states including Alabama, Georgia, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas and Utah had adopted sentencing reforms in recent years. In January 2007 the Texas legislative budget board predicted the state would have to spend “a few billion dollars” on providing 17,000 additional prison beds over the next five years, Levin said; later that year lawmakers approved $241 million on treatment services as well as drug courts and halfway houses.Georgia has passed drug sentencing reforms for three sessions in a row, while California voters adopted a ballot proposition last fall making “non-serious, nonviolent crimes” misdemeanors instead of felonies unless the offender has specific previous convictions, and steers the money that will be saved by these changes and the re-sentencing of those now serving time toward mental health and drug treatment, education and victim compensation.Lenore Anderson, who co-authored Proposition 47 and serves as the executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, said voter attitudes had shifted decisively on the issue, and the goal of the proposition was “We could finally put the nail in the coffin that the only way to talk about criminal justice was with a ‘tough on crime’ lens.”Obama’s speech Tuesday, coming on the heels of his move to commute the sentences 46 non-violent drug offenders and visit Thursday to a federal prison, is likely to elevate the issue’s profile even further. Some Republicans were not pleased at the president’s latest act of clemency: Sensenbrenner remarked, “I really am not really happy the president is engaged in a publicity stunt at the NAACP national convention, and pardoning a handful of drug offenders.”Grassley, who has sparred with Obama over his executive actions on immigration and other matters, took advantage of the news to make a light jab at the president. "He's finally doing something that the Constitution allows him to do," he said. "That's quite an accomplishment."Still, Levin noted that sentencing reform has proved so popular on the state level that Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) sent out a direct-mail piece touting the connection between the legislative changes and the state’s reduced crime rate during the last election, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) campaigned in African-American churches on the issue.“It’s exciting that good policy is turning out to be good politics as well,” he said. “We’ve established enough of a conservative beachhead on this, we’re not too afraid that just because the president’s for it some people will say, ‘I can’t be for it.’”Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.Juliet Eilperin is The Washington Post's White House bureau chief, covering domestic and foreign policy as well as the culture of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She is the author of two books—one on sharks, and another on Congress, not to be confused with each other—and has worked for the Post since 1998.Source: Washington Post (DC) Author:   Juliet EilperinPublished: July 14, 2015Copyright: 2015 Washington Post CompanyContact: letters washpost.com Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ URL: http://drugsense.org/url/iIPbq5IBCannabisNews  Justice Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/justice.shtml 
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help 
     
     
     
     




Comment #1 posted by gloovins on July 14, 2015 at 12:37:02 PT
Blah blah
The system is so addicted to prohibition and telling you what you can and cannot put into your body that it will probably never end. We will be incarcerating people for many, many years to come. This is window dressing from a lame duck president who is arrogant and uppity to the core. Always has been, always will be. The audacity of hope all drugs will one day be legal because We The People are entitled to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness and if that Pursuit of Happiness entails putting whatever you choose to as an adult into your body, then so be it. Obama will talk of ending the war on drugs but never will. It is all talk and breadcrumbs. He is just another joker-clown politician feeding now forever from the government trough We The People pay for. 
I hope everyone is having a great summer. :)
[ Post Comment ]


Post Comment