US v. Booker leaves too many in jail

The inestimable Nora Callahan of November Coalition posts a sobering essay on the recent Supreme Court decision in US v Booker, Understanding US Sentencing Laws - a layperson speaks. Nobody thought it was a panacea but Nora makes a moving case for what little effect it has on the past victims of the "tough on drugs" era of incarceration.

Nora lays it out in plain language with an easy to follow timeline. From Mandatory Minimum Sentencing to the so-called US Sentencing Guidelines that were softened by Booker, followed closely by a prison building boom where The United States "quadrupled the number of prison beds by building one prison a week" in less than a decade, she puts the pieces of the puzzle together on how this country came to become the world's biggest jailer.

One story she tells strikes an especially bitter chord that resounds throughout the non-violent substance consumer inmate community.

I think it was about that time when I read of a young woman who mailed some LSD for a boyfriend, hoping her willingness to ignore his illegal behaviors would bring him back to her lonely life. If I remember correctly, she plead guilty and accepted the Mandatory Minimum based on doses of LSD she mailed. If she had gone to trial, she would have faced not only the scheme of Mandatory Minimum Sentencing, but also the full range of US Sentencing Guidelines. By "copping to a plea," she could avoid one rail of sentencing.

While she was in prison, she called her mother and during one call three men broke into her mother's home, miles and miles away, and the young federal prisoner heard the rape of her mother begin. To make a long story short, the three rapists got out of prison before the young drug law violator did.

Nora reminds us that Booker didn't end the fight for sentencing reform and that without retroactivity many still pay with what could have been productive lives, wasted behind bars for this senseless war on some drug consumers.