FAMM President Joins Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice in Urging Congress...

FAMM President Joins Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice in Urging
Congress to Reform Federal Sentencing Policies

WASHINGTON, June 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The time is ripe for Congress
to enact meaningful reform of federal sentencing policies, said U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, FAMM President
Julie Stewart and over a dozen sentencing experts at a symposium today on
Capitol Hill sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and Harvard Law
School.

Attorney General Eric Holder reiterated the U.S. Department of Justice's
support for replacing the controversial 100:1 sentencing disparity between
crack and powder cocaine with an even 1:1 ratio, and urged Congress to support
individualized sentencing. Said Holder, "I believe we have a moment of time
that must be seized," he asserted. "The desire to have an almost mechanical
system of sentencing has led us away from individualized, fact-based
determinations that I believe, within reason, should be our goal."

Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, encouraged
Congress to consider trusting the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines to determine
appropriate sentences based on the facts of the case. "It means you trust the
organization [the U.S. Sentencing Commission] you set up that they are not
going to be overly lenient but they are going to be rational," said Justice
Breyer.

Julie Stewart, President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), a
nonprofit organization leading the fight for mandatory minimum reform since
1991, noted that support for reforming mandatory minimums has been building
for 20 years and is reaching a crescendo.

"We at FAMM believe we have reached a critical moment in this effort.
Mandatory minimums are unjust because one-size-fits-all sentences don't allow
punishment that fits the crime. Two decades ago, flawed assumptions about
crack cocaine drove Congress to adopt a particularly harsh sentencing
structure when it established new mandatory minimums for drug offenses. Now,
those assumptions have been repeatedly disproven and discredited," said
Stewart. "We urge Congress to eliminate mandatory minimums altogether."

Public attitudes on the effectiveness of mandatory sentencing laws support
reform. A 2008 FAMM poll found fully 78 percent of Americans (nearly eight in
10) agree that courts - not Congress - should determine an individual's prison
sentence. Six in 10 (59 percent) oppose mandatory sentences for nonviolent
offenders. A majority of Americans (57 percent) polled said they would vote
for a Congressional candidate who would eliminate all mandatory minimums for
nonviolent crimes.

As Congress prepares to act, they can take comfort in lessons from the
nation's previous experiment with mandatory sentences for drugs. FAMM's
report, "Correcting Course: Lessons from the 1970 Repeal of Mandatory
Minimums," describes how Congress created mandatory minimum prison sentences
for drug offenders in 1951 and repealed them in 1970 because the laws failed
to stop drug abuse, addiction and trafficking. Congress repealed mandatory
minimum sentences for drug offenses in 1970 - and not one lawmaker who voted
for repeal was defeated at the polls for that vote. The full report is online
at: http://www.famm.org/Repository/Files/8189_FAMM_BoggsAct_final.pdf.

For more information, visit www.famm.org.
https://www.sagepayments.net/sagenonprofit/shopping_cart/forms/donate.asp?M_id=495236028330

SOURCE Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM)

Monica Raffanel of FAMM, +1-202-621-5044