Mandatory Sentencing

Baltimore Protests Tough On Crime, Mandatory Sentencing

July 28, 2017 Stephen Janis, www.therealnews.com Resist! Baltimore, Mandatory Sentencing, Prison, Protests

By Stephen Janis for The Real News Network - STEPHEN JANIS: Emotions boiled over at Baltimore City Hall Tuesday after testimony from citizens who oppose a new gun law that would impose mandatory minimum sentences was delayed for hours. It was an outburst that exemplified the conflict between City Hall and many residents how to fight a surging crime rate. The law proposed last week by the mayor would impose a mandatory one-year sentence on anyone found in possession of a gun near a school, church, or public building. CATHERINE PUGH: Gun offenders in Baltimore City know, or at least they think they will not face significant amount of jail time for their offense. We believe that it is time for us to put some stronger measures in place, especially as it relates to the possession of illegal guns and to limit judicial discretion in suspending sentences for those who illegally possess guns in Baltimore City. STEPHEN JANIS: Residents say more law enforcement is not the answer. Even a mother of shooting victims. VANESSA SIMS: I was 36 weeks pregnant, 34 weeks pregnant with Chance, and I got shot in my back. Chance was shot in his shoulder within the womb and it came across his chest and came out his elbow. The bullet came out my stomach.

Understanding The Oregon Militia

January 10, 2016 Les Zaitz, www.oregonlive.com Resist! Carbon infrastructure, Federal land management, Fracking, Mandatory Sentencing, Oregon, Oregon Militia

By Les Zaitz for the Oregonian. Rep. Walden intended, he said, to quickly make points about grazing permits, the proposal for a 2.5 million acre national monument in Malheur County and other Western issues. He started talking at 7:25 p.m. Eastern time to a nearly-empty chamber. "I got up there and 17 years of working with farmers and ranchers and folks in eastern Oregon just poured out," Walden said. He described it as an "artesian well of emotion." He talked of knowing the Hammond ranching family of Diamond for nearly two decades. The patriarch, Dwight Hammond Jr., and his son Steven went to prison the day before Walden's speech. They were convicted on arson charges for burning federal land – a case that triggered the militia to rally in Burns. He recounted episode after episode of what he said was arrogant federal bureaucracies hampering rural Oregon. "Do you understand how frustrated I am at this? Can you imagine how the people on the ground feel?"

The Solution Isn’t Kinder, Gentler Prisons

December 21, 2015 Laura Flanders, www.commondreams.org Educate! Criminal Justice, Mandatory Sentencing, Prisons

By Laura Flanders. What got a person locked up – no matter what - in 1790? Piracy. Period. At the birth of the republic mandatory minimum sentences were a rare and targeted thing. Attacking and robbing ships at sea got you life, no ifs, ands or buts. What gets you a mandatory minimum sentence today? Any one of 261 different crimes. It wasn’t until the 1980s, that Congress started passing mandatory minimum’s left and right, and we do mean Left and Right. Two terms of tough-on-crime Reagan and Bush Republicans added 72 new mandatory minimum statutes; Clinton’s two terms added 116. Quoting Joe Biden in 1994, Murakawa reminds us of the liberal Democrats’ approach: “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties… 100,000 cops. The liberal wing of the Democratic party is for 124,000 new state prison cells.” This is the period, let’s remember, that saw black-white racial ratios among the imprisoned go from three to one to eight to one.

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