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daisy71109 · 4 years ago

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Mandatory Minimums

This was a paper I wrote about mandatory minimum sentencing laws in the United States and the impact they have had for a class final. It is written in APA format, which is why there are parentheses with sources at the end of some sentences. there is also a list of resources that I used at the bottom. Yes, it is long, it was ~6.5 pages long w/ a double-spaced 12 pt. Times New Roman font.

Laws exist to keep people from doing whatever they wish to keep everyone living in society safe and happy, and people have been arrested for breaking those laws since they were created around the 22nd century BC. Although the nature of some of those laws has changed, many of them still stay the same–don’t murder, don’t assault people, don’t steal, just to name a few. However, the punishments for such crimes look much different from what we see today. While some places here in the United States still have the death penalty, many states have abolished it–largely because many see it to be a cruel and unusual punishment, something prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution–and mostly it is only carried out if the person has committed murder or treason, or something of a nature similar to those, which differs greatly from long ago (aclu.org). In many ancient cultures, people who committed theft and were caught could face a public beating, or even death, while today they would be sentenced to time in jail or prison.

Jails and prisons are a way to keep criminals who have been convicted of a crime off the streets. It houses every type of criminal, some violent–like people who have committed murder, assault, or rape–and some not so violent–people who have committed theft or are found to be in possession of drugs. However, the United States has a problem. The United States holds about 4.2% of the world’s population, but it also holds at least 20% of the world’s prisoners. There are around 2.3 million inmates being housed in around 7,147 state and federal prisons, jails, correctional facilities, detention facilities, and many other facilities like those across the United States and its territories (Sawyer and Wagner, 2020). According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1979, there were 313,731 inmates across state and federal prisons in the United States, a number that increased by over 15,000 by 1980, following an upward trend in the number of inmates across the country (Kalish, 1981). By 1985, the number of sentenced prisoners was 481,616 (Minor-Harper, 1986), and by 1996, that number had skyrocketed to over 1.1 million–1,138,984 to be exact, according to Alfred Blumstein and Allen J. Beck’s Population Growth in U.S. Prisons, 1980-1996 (Blumstein and Beck, 1999). That number continued to increase, reaching around 2.3 million in 2020. The large increase in inmates was caused by a few policies implemented during the mid-to-late twentieth century–specifically around the 1970s and 1980s–that have continued to this day. Throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century, the United States heavily focused on the war on drugs, which eventually leads President Reagan to sign the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which appropriated $1.7 billion to fight the drug war (NPR, 2007). However, that was not the only thing that the bill did. It also implemented mandatory minimums for drug-related offenses.

The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation states that “Mandatory minimum sentencing laws force a judge to hand down a minimum prison sentence based on the charges a prosecutor brings against a defendant which result in a conviction -- usually a guilty plea” (CJPF.org, paragraph 1). There are mandatory minimum sentences for a variety of different crimes–sex offenses, identity theft, illegal ownership or use of a firearm, and drug trafficking or possession. The minimum sentence given to someone found guilty for drug trafficking depends on what type of drug they had, how much of it they had, and whether they had been convicted of any prior drug felonies. In theory, giving different punishments for different situations makes sense, but in reality, the mandatory minimum policy in place has created a system that has allowed for thousands of people, especially people of color, to be locked away in prisons for years, and in some cases, for life.

Of the 2.3 million people currently incarcerated in the United States, around 450,000 of them are there because of drug-related charges (prisonpolicy.org). About 19.5% of people incarcerated in the United States are there because of drug-related charges, and that number will not be going down anytime soon unless something is done about it. Police across the United States make over 1 million drug possession arrests a year, many of which lead to prison sentences. And of course, because of the mandatory minimums, people of color, who disproportionately tend to be in the lower social classes, are largely the group who ends up going to prison for these drug-related crimes. Crack-cocaine and powder-cocaine are relatively similar, but with a few key differences. Powder cocaine was seen as a status symbol in the 1980s–it was seen as the fancy drug, the drug that rich people used–but crack cocaine was seen much differently–it was, and still is cheaper, and as a result, was used more by the lower classes. Because of this differing view, the mandatory minimum sentences differ, disproportionately affecting lower-income people.

For powder cocaine, you need 500 grams in order to get the mandatory minimum sentence of five years–unless you have previously been convicted of a drug felony, in which case the minimum is ten years. However, for crack cocaine, only 28 grams is needed for a person to get the mandatory minimum. And those are only the minimum sentences. People with no prior drug felonies who have the five-year minimum sentence also have a maximum sentence of 40 years, a number that increases to life imprisonment if someone has been convicted of a prior drug felony (United States Sentencing Commission, 2017). And as was mentioned previously, crack tends to be used by people of lower socioeconomic status–who are disproportionately people of color–because it’s cheaper, which leads to more and more people of color ending up in prisons with sentences of at least five-to-ten years. And while the mandatory minimum sentencing laws being discussed here are federal, states weren’t far behind in adopting their own versions. Mandatory minimum sentences, along with countless other policies and biases across the country, perpetuate a cycle of racist ideology that has lasted for hundreds of years.

Another major issue with these mandatory minimum sentencing laws is that they took the sentencing power away from the judges–who are arguably the most neutral party in the courtroom–and given it to prosecutors. The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation states:

“The justice system has been distorted by removing from judges the power to decide the proper sentence in their cases. The sentencing process now involves the rote consideration of a matrix of impersonal data dominated by often irrelevant drug quantities and other circumstances that can be shaped by the prosecutor's charging choices. The elimination of judicial discretion in sentencing has allowed prosecutors to acquire excessive power to impose sentences.”

The problem is, overwhelmingly, most of the elected prosecutors in the United States are white and male (Reflective Democracy Campaign, 2015 & 2019). And most isn’t just a slight majority here–as of 2019, 95% of elected prosecutors are white and 73% are male. And because the United States has a tendency to be racist–shown by these mandatory minimums, no matter how much people like to deny that they are racist–these prosecutors are going to be more likely to ask for harsher sentences, are going to attempt to place more charges onto the defendant, and get them sent to prison for longer. With these mandatory minimums, we focused more on sending people to prison, especially people of color, instead of rehabilitation–getting people who are addicted to these drugs off of them so they can hopefully go on and have a more successful life.

When mandatory minimums were first implemented, the United States was amid the war on drugs and was in an era where the stance of being tough on crime was normal. However, as previously mentioned, this war on drugs had heavy racist undertones, something confirmed in 1994 by former President Nixon’s counsel and assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman when he said:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (eji.org, 2016)

However, just because something is broken, and has been broken for a long time, doesn’t mean that it cannot be fixed.

For starters, there is H. R.7194, also known as the Mandatory Minimum Reform Act of 2020, which was introduced to the House of Representatives by Representative Maxine Waters of California's 43rd congressional district on June 11, 2020 (congress.gov). In the bill's text, there is a sentence reading, “To eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for all drug offenses,” and also included is a list of amendments to a variety of sections of the Controlled Substances Act. Representative Waters isn’t the only one calling for the reform, or outright elimination of mandatory minimums. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, among many other groups are all in favor of reforming or eliminating mandatory minimum sentences. Alongside that, there have been some calls to release the people who were convicted of nonviolent drug offenses back into society, due to people knowing the reason behind the existence of the mandatory minimum, the fact that some drugs–marijuana in particular–are no longer being villainized like they used to, and that more people are understanding addiction and realize that sending people to prison doesn’t have the effect of stopping drug use people thought it did.

However, just doing one, and not the other fails to completely solve the problem. If you release non-violent drug offenders but keep the mandatory minimums, the cycle is just going to continue, and hundreds of thousands of people, especially people of color, are going to be put back into prisons due to low-level drug offenses. If you get rid of the mandatory minimums but don’t release non-violent drug offenders, you still have hundreds of thousands of people who are serving potentially life sentences for just possessing drugs. Focusing on rehabilitation instead of sending people to prison would help to combat the system that has been in place for decades–a system that criminalizes people for needing help but not being able to get it. Not only would this help to reverse some of the damage done by racist policies that were put in place under the guise of being tough on crime, and it would also alleviate some of the tax burden on Americans or would allow for more money to be spent on social programs like drug rehabilitation programs. As of 2017, the United States allocated over $7 billion dollars to the federal prison budget, which exceeds the $5.5 billion allocated to care for all the homeless people in the United States (cjpf.org).

Another option–although it has a much lesser impact–is just to reform the mandatory minimum laws and not release anyone who has been previously convicted of a non-violent drug crime. Reforming the mandatory minimum laws would look more like changing the amount of a drug that is required to reach the mandatory minimum threshold or reducing the minimum sentence instead of just completely getting rid of them. The problem is, you would still have hundreds of thousands of people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses, and you would still allow a system to exist that disproportionately negatively affects people of color.

Overall, mandatory minimum sentencing laws negatively impact poorer people and people of color the most, causing hundreds of thousands of them to be sent to prison for years for what is, for many, just a nonviolent drug offense. People are being separated from their families and sent to prison, some for life, over policies that were created under the guise of being tough on crime, but were in actuality just inherently racist and playing off of the fears of white Americans, something that has been admitted by several people who worked in various presidential administrations or campaigns over the years. These laws need to be repealed, and the people who were convicted of nonviolent drug offenses need to be released in order for the United States to move forward and atone for its racist past. Without repealing the laws and releasing those people, we are allowing for a racist system that has profited off of people of color to stand and continue.

References

Blumstein, A., & Beck, A. J. (1999). Population Growth in U. S. Prisons, 1980-1996. Crime and Justice, 26, 17–61. https://doi.org/10.1086/449294

Bureau of Justice Statistics , & Kalish, C. B., Prisoners in 1980 (1981). Washington, D.C.; U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, & Minor-Harper, S., State and Federal prisoners, 1925-85 (1986). Washington D.C.; U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics .

The Case Against the Death Penalty. American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.). https://www.aclu.org/other/case-against-death-penalty.

Covington, J. (1997). The Social Construction Of the Minority Drug Problem. Social Justice, 24(4 (70)), 117-147. Retrieved April 26, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/29767045

House Judiciary and House Energy and Commerce, & Waters, M. [Bill], Mandatory Minimum Reform Act of 2020 (2020). Washington D.C.

Justice For All: Who Prosecutes in America? Reflective Democracy Campaign. (2015, July). https://wholeads.us/research/justice-for-all-report-elected-prosecutors/.

Legal Information Institute. (n.d.). Eighth Amendment. Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/eighth_amendment.

Mandatory Minimums and Sentencing Reform. CJPF.ORG. (n.d.). https://www.cjpf.org/mandatory-minimums.

Netflix. (2016). 13Th. https://www.netflix.com/watch/80091741?tctx=0%2C1%2C%2C%2C%2C. (I highly recommend watching this on Netflix, it is very good)

Nixon Adviser Admits War on Drugs Was Designed to Criminalize Black People. Equal Justice Initiative. (2021, March 19). https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/.

NPR. (2007, April 2). Timeline: America's War on Drugs. NPR. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490.

Sawyer, W., & Wagner, P. (2020, March 24). Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020. Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020 | Prison Policy Initiative. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html.

Tipping the Scales: Challengers Take on the Old Boys Club of Elected Prosecutors. Reflective Democracy Campaign. (2019, October). https://wholeads.us/research/tipping-the-scales-elected-prosecutors/.

United States Sentencing Commission, Mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses in the federal criminal justice system9–64 (2017). Washington D.C.

Wagner, P., & Bertram, W. (2020, January 16). "What percent of the U.S. is incarcerated?" (And other ways to measure mass incarceration). Prison Policy Initiative. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarcerated/.

#racism #mandatory minimums #drug issues #drug arrests #arrests #america #united states #war on drugs #politics #political stuff #democracy #democrats #reform #end racism #prison #prison system

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daisy71109 · 4 years ago

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On Fandoms, Age, and Gender: The Politics of “ Putting Away Childish Things”

Weighing in on yet another round of “fan spaces are youth spaces” (aka “go home and knit, old lady” or “You’re old enough to be my/someone’s mom! gross!” )

Consider these thoughts:

There’s a whole set of interests and behaviors that you might become interested in as you grow from child to adolescent to young adult and take greater interest in the wider world.

You might like horses, or dolls. Or building models. You might play soccer, or follow baseball every summer and learn about box scores. You might follow the college football draft, or love a pop band. You might deeply admire a rock band and learn to play the guitar. You might love superheroes and see all their movies. You might love space opera and collect paperback books. Maybe you collect trading cards of your favorite team players – or movie moments. You probably get t-shirts and posters of teams, or media outlets. You might get deeply into a social or political cause.

Those are all expressions of interest in the world, all with associated social aspects, many with associated creative actions.

And then you get older. And here’s the thing about that list. The things on that list that are “for boys?” Are also “for men.” But the things on that list that are “for girls” or “for nerds?” Are only “for children.”

Adult men wear brightly colored team clothing and paint their faces without shame. They join fantasy football leagues and hang out online. They follow Phish (or continuously talk about how they did when that was a thing). They spend vast sums on tickets to bowl games. They get excited all over the internet about Geddy Lee’s greatest hits. They spend long afternoons on the golf course, playing very bad golf.

No one tells them to grow up

An adult woman who turns a childhood dollhouse into a beautiful scale model of a real Victorian home is “eccentric.” An adult man who builds a vast HO train layout in his basement is a “train enthusiast.” An adult woman who displays her favorite Bryer horses is “odd,” an adult man with a shelf of signed baseballs is “a collector” or even “an investor.”

Adult women making fanart of attractive movie stars is “creepy,’ while adult men decorating their garages with calendar art of scantily-clad very-young women is “just what guys do.”

Interests and hobbies that were feminine and are taken up by men become acceptable. When The Beatles were greeted with mobs of fainting teen girls, they were a “boy band.” When young men discovered them, they became Serious Musicians.

Over and over, across fields of interest, things that girls like are “toys and games and childish” and should be left behind by adults, while things that boys like are “hobbies and sports” that are lifetime pastimes. And acceptable “hobbies” for adult women? Most are things that could be coded as household chores, but generations of women have worked to turn into enjoyable pastimes: knitting, sewing, quilting. Home decor. Baking. Many adult women (myself included) enjoy doing those things in their free time and have elevated them to art forms. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re rooted in utility, while “men’s hobbies” are, by and large, rooted in leisure.

Look around you and follow the pattern. And then, before you ask “Why are adult women in fan spaces,” maybe ask “why do I feel like adult women don’t get to have fun?”

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