Dragostea mea emanuel

DRAGOSTEA MEA EMANUEL --
They are not releasing everybody. This is for drug addicts, and crack cocaine users; the govternment arrested too many coke dealers, and now they are trying to make up for it.
Article: By Sari Horwitz January 30 , EARLY RELEASE:
The Obama administration, stepping up its efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system, called Thursday for the early release of more low-level, nonviolent drug offenders from federal prisons.
Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, speaking to the New York State Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section, said the administration wants to free inmates who no longer pose a threat to public safety and whose long-term incarceration “harms our criminal justice system.” He appealed to defense lawyers to identify candidates for clemency.
“You each can play a critical role in this process by providing a qualified petitioner — one who has a clean record in prison, does not present a threat to public safety, and who is facing a life or near-life sentence that is excessive under current law — with the opportunity to get a fresh start,” Cole told the lawyers.

His remarks were part of a broader prison reform effort by the Justice Department. In August, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that low-level drug offenders with no connection to gangs or large-scale drug organizations would no longer be charged with offenses that called for severe mandatory sentences. President Obama later commuted the sentences of eight inmates serving a long time for crack cocaine convictions.
Each of them had served at least 15 years and had been convicted before the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which sought to reduce the sentencing disparity between those convicted of crack and powder cocaine crimes.
“The president’s grant of commutations for these eight individuals is only a first step,” Cole said Thursday. “There are more low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who remain in prison, and who would likely have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of precisely the same offenses today.”

It’s unclear how many inmates could qualify for clemency, but thousands of federal inmates are serving time for crack cocaine offenses.
Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, applauded Cole’s announcement.
“The Obama administration is taking an important step toward undoing the damage that extreme sentencing has done to so many in our criminal justice system,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office.
In other action Thursday on criminal justice reform, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance a bill, sponsored by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), that would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug offenders by half and allow 8,800 federal inmates imprisoned for crack cocaine crimes to return to court to seek punishments in line with the Fair Sentencing Act.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the panel, called the legislation “a step backward.” In a statement, he cited a letter sent to Holder from the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys that said “the merits of mandatory minimum sentences are abundantly clear.”

“They provide us leverage to secure cooperation from defendants. . . . They protect law-abiding citizens and help to hold crime in check,” the group said.
Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, called the bill “bipartisan and reasonable” and said it would “save taxpayers billions of dollars by locking up fewer nonviolent drug offenders for shorter periods of time.”

Holder, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said federal prison costs represent one-third of the Justice Department budget. He called the enormous costs of overburdened prisons “a growing and potentially very dangerous problem.”
The cost of incarceration in the United States was $80 billion in 2010. The U.S. population has grown by about a third since 1980, but the federal prison population has increased by about 800 percent and federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity, Justice officials said.

Sari Horwitz covers the Justice Department, after 30 years at the paper where she has been an investigative reporter and covered federal law enforcement, crime, education and social services.

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mbshus

1/31/2014 2:32 PM PST

My view is a bit unorthodox because instead of taking the less violent criminals out of prison to release them into society with a slap on the wrist, so they can repeat the crime without consequence, I suggest we do the opposite. Release the overcrowded prisons by killing off the incarcerated who shouldn't be there in the first place. The ones with free room and board with multiple life sentences promise empty rooms when they are "vacated." On top of that, "repeat customers" would be less likely to come back for a second time around on offenses noteworthy enough to give the perpetrator to believe they might not make it out if they reoffend.




Grow some Obama and take the pants off of your wife for crying out loud.

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bluntnose

1/31/2014 1:11 PM PST

Long past due. Since the passage of the Sentencing Guidelines Act in about 1988, federal sentencing law has been draconian. Seeking to remove discretion from the trial judge who sat through the trial, the "fix" was to mandate harsh sentences on everyone. Hardly a better answer than being too light on everyone. Any sentencing regime which does not allow a certain amount of experimentation by sentencing judges, to see what will protect society from real dangers and allow for rehabilitation where possible, is inherently unjust, and, oh by the way, will wind up costing the U.S. taxpayer waaaay more than we're willing to pay out.

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hmr

1/31/2014 10:19 AM PST

Corrupt, terrorists, killers, thieves, tax thieves and other criminals are cash vouchers. If you visit courts, majority of disputes are money disputes one way or another. If you turn criminals into free cash vouchers for everyone to grab at, they wont be able to mix up in the society any more. Media can fantasize to how to grab free cash vouchers in more technical details with play safe advice to educate people. A thirsty and a not-thirsty, both watch water but with different angle. A criminal and a citizen both watch money very differently. They jump on it in their own styles. They can’t be same. They can’t learn same. Let’s make criminals rabbits …people chasing them like eagles. Dogs are good at smell and humans are good at education and smell is just a small part of big canvas of education. Educate people to chase free cash vouchers to make societies more strong. Criminals do crimes to make money illegally, why not reverse the game? Why not turn criminals into a legal revenue generator for people? Does it look difficult and complicated? It is more than simple and easy than expansive breakfast on mars but more fruitful and healthy and scientifically more creative and a big business.

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HeatherForever

1/31/2014 3:51 AM PST

Please free Timothy Tyler. He pled guilty (like 95% of federal inmates) to selling a few grams of LSD after being pestered by an informant. He thought that by pleading guilty he would keep them from sending his father to prison, but they gave his father ten years and Tim got life. His father died in prison, less than a year before he was to be released. This was more than 20 years ago.

He was never a member of a gang, violent, nor had he been in prison before. He was just a hippy kid who tried to do a favor for a "friend"

Go to FreeTimTyler.com It is time for him to go home to his sister.

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