Federal drug laws produce a labeling problem. When you hear the term "drug trafficker," you may think about Pablo Escobar or Walter White, but the truth is that under federal law, drug traffickers include people who purchase pseudo-ephedrine for their methamphetamine dealer; act as intermediary in a series of small deals; or even get a luggage for the wrong pal. Thanks to conspiracy laws, everyone on the totem pole can be subject to the same extreme necessary minimum sentences.
To the men and women who prepared our federal drug laws in 1986, this might come as a surprise. According to Sen. Robert Byrd, cosponsor of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the factor to connect five- and ten-year necessary sentences to drug trafficking was to punish "the kingpins-- the masterminds who are actually running these operations", and the mid-level dealers.
Fast forward twenty-five years. Today, nearly everybody convicted of a federal drug criminal activity is convicted of "drug trafficking", which usually results in at least a five- or ten-year necessary jail sentence. That's a lot of time in federal jail for lots of people who are minor parts of drug trade, the vast bulk of whom are males and females of color.
This is the system that federal district Judge Mark Bennett sees every day. Judge Bennett sits on the district court in northern Iowa, and he manages a lot of drug cases., I would have sent 1,092 of my fellow people to federal prison for mandatory minimum sentences ranging from sixty months to life without the possibility of release.
The numbers can't convey the unreasonable disaster of it all. This is how he explains a recent drug trafficking case:
I just recently sentenced a group of more than twenty accused on meth trafficking conspiracy charges. Eighteen were 'tablet smurfers,' as federal prosecutors put it, suggesting their role amounted to routinely buying and delivering cold medication to meth cookers in exchange for very little, low-grade quantities to feed their serious addictions. All of them faced compulsory minimum sentences of sixty or 120 months.
There is information to recommend that Judge Bennett's experience is not uncharacteristic. In 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission compiled considerable information on drug and crack sentencing. They found that in 2005, most of the lowest-level drug- and crack-trafficking offenders-- men and women referred to as "street-level dealers", "couriers/mules", and "renter/loader/lookout/ enabler/users"-- got drug conspiracy attorneys 5- or ten-year mandatory jail sentences. This is specifically true for crack-cocaine accused, the majority of whom are black; regardless of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, selling a small quantity of crack drug (28 grams) brings the same obligatory minimum sentence-- five years-- as offering 500 grams of powder drug.
This is the truth for which supporters of severe federal drug laws must account. We can not pretend that heavy sentences for ladies like Kemba Smith and guys like Jamel Dossie are the fluke errors of overboard laws. We need to confess that our sentencing of minor players in the drug trade to prison terms implied for the leaders of big drug companies-- as a typical event, not as an exception. As a result, we needlessly imprison lots of minor wrongdoers for extended periods. Judge Bennett decries the human expenses of these sentences:
If lengthy obligatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug addicts really worked, one may be able to justify them. I have actually seen how they leave hundreds of thousands of young kids parent less and thousands of aging, infirm and dying parents childless.
Here, again, we have evidence that Judge Bennett is right: long obligatory sentences are unneeded for a lot of drug transgressors. In 2002 and 2003, Michigan and NYC rescinded mandatory sentences for drug offenders and gave judges the power to impose shorter sentences, probation, or drug treatment. The sky didn't fall, but criminal offense rates did. So did jail expenses.
For years, Judge Bennett has actually seen a system that does not make good sense. He has actually seen necessary laws composed for the most severe, massive drug dealers applied to the men and ladies on the most affordable rungs of the drug trade, and he has actually seen it take place a lot. We when imagined that serious compulsory sentences would be used to handle the leaders of big drug operations. It's time our federal drug laws were fit to the people that they truly target.
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