Has anyone looked at Obama's positions on Crime, Punishment, and Drugs? Interesting stuff!!!

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Sun Jan-13-08 12:26 PM
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Has anyone looked at Obama's positions on Crime, Punishment, and Drugs? Interesting stuff!!!

I was reading Obama's positions on Crime, Punishment, and Drugs. This is on the Civil Rights portion of his website. http://www.barackobama.com/issues/pdf/HowardConvocationFactSheet.pdf

He's got lots of interesting ideas on how to deal with crime and drug issues. Read on....

In recent weeks, the travesty in Jena has shown us how much work there is left to do in this country, particularly
in our criminal justice system. Whether it�s the fact that six young boys were charged and threatened with a
punishment that far outweighs their crime or the fact that a public defender didn�t call a single witness at trial,
this case is another indicator that our criminal justice system is in need of reform. As a state senator, Barack Obama led the fight in Illinois to repair a broken death penalty system and to pass a
racial profiling bill. In the U.S. Senate, Obama has continued to fight against racial profiling and high
recidivism rates, while also working to fund proven prevention programs that give young people options before
they find themselves involved in crime.

Barack Obama believes that it�s not enough to be �tough on crime� � we have to be tough and smart. Laws
with racially discriminatory impact that have little success in rehabilitating offenders and reducing recidivism
rates are not �smart.� And refusing to address the hard work of preventing crime, supporting police and
prosecutors and supporting ex-offenders once they are released is not �tough.� As president, Obama will
address the flaws in our system that have left 74 percent of African Americans believing that the system is
biased against them � a particularly disturbing statistic in light of the fact that African Americans make up
approximately 50 percent of the nation�s homicide victims.

Eliminate Crack/Cocaine Disparity: The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 imposes a five-year mandatory
minimum penalty for a first-time trafficking offense involving 5 or more grams of crack cocaine, the weight of
less than two sugar packets and yielding between 10 and 50 doses. To get the same 5 year mandatory minimum
for powder cocaine, an offender would need to traffic 500 grams of powder, yielding between 2,500 and 5,000
doses. Against the recommendation of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, these mandatory minimums were
signed into law again in 1995. Barack Obama believes the disparity between crack and powder-based cocaine
is wrong, cannot be justified and should be eliminated. The sentencing disparity has disproportionately filled
our prison with young black and Latino drug users � men and women who he will work to rehabilitate so they
can become productive and responsible community members. More than 80 percent of crack cocaine defendants
in 2006 were African American, and African Americans now serve as much time in prison for drug offenses
(58.7 months) as whites do for violent offenses (61.7 months). Republican Senators, like Jeff Sessions from
Alabama, have argued that as a matter of law and public policy, the heavy mandatory sentences for crack as
compared to cocaine make no sense. As president, Obama will work in a bipartisan way to eliminate these
disparities. He will also repeal the mandatory minimum sentence for first-time offenders convicted of simple
possession of crack, as crack is the only drug that a non-violent first-time offender can receive a mandatory
minimum sentence for possessing.

Reform Mandatory Minimums: There are at least 171 mandatory minimum provisions in federal criminal
statutes. According to the United States Sentencing Commission, in FY 2006, 33,636 counts of conviction
carried a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment, affecting 20,737 offenders. Most of these counts of
conviction � 82.9 percent � were for drug offenses. Black and Hispanic offenders make up the overwhelming
majority of individuals convicted under a mandatory minimum sentence. A RAND study found that mandatory
minimum sentences are less effective than discretionary sentencing and drug treatment in reducing drug-related
crime, and every leading expert body in criminal justice has opposed the use of mandatory minimum sentences,
including the Sentencing Commission, the Judicial Conference, the American Bar Association, and leading
criminal justice scholars. Chief Justice Rehnquist observed that �one of the best arguments against any more
mandatory minimums, and perhaps against some of those that we already have, is that they frustrate the careful
calibration of sentences.� Justice Kennedy stated that he �can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of
federal mandatory minimum sentences.� Justice Breyer, one of the architects of the Sentencing Guidelines,
noted that �mandatory minimum statutes are fundamentally inconsistent with Congress� simultaneous effort to
create a fair, honest, and rational sentencing system through the use of Sentencing Guidelines.� Politicians of
both parties have also come out against mandatory minimums. Obama will immediately review these sentences
to see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the ineffective warehousing of non-violent drug offenders.

Drug Courts: There are now drug courts in operation or being planned in all fifty states, the District of
Columbia, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, two Federal Districts, and 121 tribal programs.
Existing drug courts have proven successful in dealing with non-violent offenders. These courts offer a mix of
treatment and sanctions, in lieu of traditional incarceration. Offenders who participate in these courts and
complete their treatment can have charges against them dropped or can plead guilty without receiving prison
time. The success of these programs has been dramatic: One New York study found that drug court graduates
had a rearrest rate that was on average 29 percent lower than comparable offenders who had not participated in
the drug court program. These programs are also far cheaper than incarceration. Currently, the Department of
Justice makes grants available to state and local governments to establish drug courts. Barack Obama will
replicate these efforts within the federal criminal justice system by signing a law that would authorize federal
magistrates to preside over drug courts and federal probation officers to oversee the offenders� compliance with
drug treatment programs. Obama will ensure that our federal courts and probation offices have adequate
resources to deal with this new program.

Ensure Adequate Counsel: Events in the Jena case have shed light on another problem in our country: too
many defendants have poor counsel. Barack Obama will work to improve the quality of our nation�s public
defenders by creating loan-forgiveness programs for law students who enter this field.
End Racial Profiling: This year, the Department of Justice released a survey that found that blacks and
Hispanics are more than twice as likely as whites to be searched, arrested, threatened, or subdued with force
when stopped by police. Of those who had force used against them, 83 percent felt that the force was excessive.
As a state senator, Barack Obama introduced and passed a law requiring the Illinois Department of
Transportation to record the race, age and gender of all drivers stopped for traffic violations so that bias could
be detected and addressed. As a U.S. Senator, Obama cosponsored federal legislation to ban racial profiling
and require federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to take steps to eliminate the practice. As
president, Obama will continue his decades-long fight against racial profiling and sign legislation that will ban
the practice of racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal funding to state and
local police departments if they adopt policies to prohibit the practice.
Reform the Death Penalty: As a member of the Illinois state senate, Barack Obama led efforts to reform a
broken death penalty system that sent 13 innocent people to death row because it was filled with error,
questionable police tactics, racial bias, and shoddy legal work. Obama drafted and passed a law requiring
videotaping of interrogations and confessions in capital cases to ensure that prosecutions are fair. As president,
Obama will encourage the states to adopt similar reforms.

Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Supports: America�s urban communities are facing
an incarceration and post-incarceration crisis. Up to two-thirds of the 650,000 prisoners released every year are
rearrested within three years. Nearly 2 million children have a parent in a correctional facility. Barack Obama
recognizes that it is simply unacceptable to keep ignoring this crisis in American families and communities. In
the U.S. Senate, Obama has worked to provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling, and
employment opportunities to ex-offenders. In addition to signing these important programs into law, Obama
will create a prison-to-work incentive program, modeled on the Welfare-to-Work Partnership, to create ties with
employers, third-party agencies that provide training and support services to ex-offenders, and to improve exoffender
employment and job retention rates. Obama will also reduce bureaucratic barriers at state correctional
systems that prevent former inmates from finding and maintaining employment.

Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: Barack Obama cosponsored legislation that would expand federal jurisdiction
to reach violent hate crimes perpetrated because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation,
gender identity, or physical disability. As a state senator, Obama passed tough legislation that made conspiracy
to commit hate crimes against the law. As president, he will ensure that the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights
Division makes hate crime a priority.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/pdf/HowardConvocationFactSheet.pdf