EXCERPT FROM THE NEXT PHASE OF THE DRUG WAR

FROM THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE

THE NEXT PHASE OF THE WAR ON DRUGS

BY ANDREW COHEN

(EXCERPT)  

What Still Needs to Be Done

So the judiciary in many respects has led the way but now the legislative and executive branches will have to proactively reset the nation’s sentencing laws. The good news is that there are today several measures with bipartisan support pending on Capitol Hill. There is theSmarter Sentencing Act of 2013, which largely tracks the Attorney Generals new proposal. There is the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013, which would codify the broader discretion the Supreme Court has given to sentencing judges to use discretion in selecting prison terms. And there are several marijuana reform measures also pending that deserve close attention.

But if Washington really wants to end prison overcrowding, and ease the pain and cost of the war on drugs, it ought to go beyond all this. The Attorney General and Congress ought to launch investigations into the widespread use and abuse of “private prisons.” The Justice Department ought to exercise more oversight over its Bureau of Prisons, which is abusing and neglecting mentally ill prisoners. And both the Obama Administration and Congress also ought to push the Drug Enforcement Administration to undertake an objective new review of its classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug. Until that classification changes— and it absolutely should—the federal government will be at war with itself over the single biggest cause of our mass incarceration—the criminalization of marijuana.

All of this will not be finished in the next 100 days, to paraphrase President John Kennedy, but let us begin. If we are going to empty our prisons of tens of thousands of non-violent offenders, if we are to ease the horrific financial burden we’ve created for ourselves through mass incarceration, if we are to end the war on drugs with a realistic acknowledgment that there can be an honorable withdrawal, if we are to bring prison conditions back to constitutional standards, the time is now. The window of reason, after decades of self-delusion, is open and you never know when it is going to close again.

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