Saki Knafo's title,
California Lawmakers Take A Stand Against Racist Drug War Policies, gives California legislatures more credit than they are due, for sure, but since encouraging news about our draconian, excessively harsh, and insane drug laws is so rare, let's cut him some slack and applaud the California Senate's Public Safety Committee. They voted 4-2 to approve moving a bill forward that would revise sentencing guidelines that are much harsher for crack cocaine than powdered cocaine.
The California Fair Sentencing Act, which passed the state Senate’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday by a vote of 4-2, would revise a decades-old sentencing policy under which people convicted of crack offenses are dealt substantially harsher punishments than those found guilty of analogous crimes involving powder cocaine.
Crack and powder cocaine are virtually the same drug, but crack is cheaper and more prevalent in low-income neighborhoods. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, a national advocacy group that opposes the drug war, people of color account for nearly everyone sent to California prisons for the specific crime of possession of crack for sale, a vaguely defined felony with a mandatory prison sentence of no fewer than three years. The new law will trim that sentence to two years, bringing it in line with the penalty for powder cocaine. The law will also make crack offenders eligible for probation for the first time since the 1980s.
Each year, about a thousand people are held in California’s prison system on charges of possession for sale, at a cost to the state of about $60 million per year. Blacks accounted for 77 percent from 2005 to 2010, and Latinos for 18 percent, according to an analysis of state data by the Drug Policy Alliance. Whites, meanwhile, represented less than 2 percent of these prisoners.
To put those numbers in context, blacks make up just 6 percent of California’s total population, Latinos are 38 percent and whites are 39 percent.
Our nation's drug laws are so poorly designed, so excessive, and out of proportion with reason, that I believe they constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Many of those using illegal drugs are self-medicating for depression or other mental illnesses in a society that refuses to provide adequate mental and public health treatment.
While minor reforms like this are encouraging they fall far short of the complete overhaul we need–the replacement of our police-punishment model with a mental health and social services treatment model. Reforms this minor are like putting bandaids on a gash that needs major surgery.