Prison Reform Possible During the Trump Era?
In recent years there has been a lot of talk about the need to reduce sentences for non-violent drug offenders. Alice Marie Johnson is a 63-year-old great-grandmother who was sentenced to life without parole due to her first time nonviolent drug and money laundering charges in 1996. Johnson had become involved in drug trade after losing a longtime job at FedEx due to a gambling addiction, a divorce, and the loss of her youngest child in a motorcycle accident. Following her conviction, she had acknowledged that she was an intermediary in the drug trafficking organization, but claimed that she did not actually make the deals or sell the drugs. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, drug trafficking offenders can receive life sentences for dealing ¨large quantities¨ of drugs but in real terms, those quantities are extremely small : 1 kilogram of heroin, half a kilogram of meth, or a quarter of crack cocaine. She exhibited good behavior in prison, and according to her lawyer, the warden had in fact supported her release. A campaign in support of her release was launched by the American Civil Liberties Union, composed of activists who believed the punishment was excessive and an example of disproportionate impacts on the African-Americans. Recently Kim and the Presidents son in law Jared Kushner sought to persuade Trump to grant clemency to Johnson. Kim met with Mr. Trump himself and discussed prison reform, petitioning for her clemency. On the advice of Kim Kardashian, June 6, 2018 President Donald Trump commuted the prison term of Alice. He reduced her time and let her free. This marked Trumps sixth act of clemency since taking office, which is a very surprising move coming from Trump, a president who has publicly called for executing drug dealers. This case highlights just how many nonviolent drug offenders are serving life terms in federal prison, 25% of prisoners (364,000 people) are all lower-level offenders that fall under this problem. More clemency's like Alice Johnson's will reduce the mass incarceration problem in the U.S.
The American justice system's punishment regarding crimes involving illegal drugs is simply stupid. We spend superfluous amounts of money and time imprisoning American citizens. Meanwhile, Portugal has legalized drugs and reallocated the funding from their prisons to creating infrastructure for rehabilitation centers. This saves money and helps solve the core issue: drug addiction.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Peters comment on this. The American government needs to rethink how they punish criminals for the crime that they did. I feel that there are many more different options that just sending someone to jail, and they may even be more effective. I feel that if the authorities start spending more time on different types of punishments for the different times of criminals, then there will be a lot of time and money saved. Because right now, I do not think that it is effective to send everyone who committed a crime to jail.
ReplyDeleteWell, I believe that this case was unfortunate for Alice Marie Johnson. During the pre-2010s, being convicted of petty drug-dealing resulted in a very harsh punishment. Looking back at the pre-2010 era, the government and the American public was obsessed with fighting against drug usage. Anyone caught in dealing drugs would be penalized with a very severe sentence. I do not believe Alice Marie Johnson deserved to be sentenced to life. I believe the appropriate punishment would have been maybe five years in jail and five years probation. The past-era was hell-bent on making sure that countries to the South of the United States (Colombia and Mexico) would no longer profit off of American citizens using drugs.
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