Coming Home After a Reduced Sentence

[flashl]

Those Released Since Disparities in Cocaine Penalties Were Offset Find a Different World

Days after her release from prison, Nerika Jenkins made a bold prediction: "I'll bounce right back into society."

Although the world changed considerably over the 11 years of her imprisonment, she said, "I'm not afraid." She took vocational classes -- masonry, carpentry, painting, culinary arts, Microsoft Excel and horticulture -- while serving time in Philadelphia and Danbury, Conn. "I'm just ready to achieve my short-term goal, building a nursing home," she said. "They're always in need of places for the elderly."

More than 7,000 crack cocaine offenders such as Jenkins, 36, have received reduced sentences since March, when the U.S. Sentencing Commission put retroactive sentence guidelines into effect to offset what the commission felt were overly harsh punishments for crack cocaine related crimes, and it is an open question whether they will succeed or return to a life behind bars.

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Nearly 90 percent of those who received the tough sentences for crack cocaine were black men and women. Most users and dealers of powder cocaine are white and Latino.

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Natasha J. Marshall, 48, underwent a similar experience in Fresno, Calif., when police arrested her husband, a drug dealer. Marshall said she had no idea that he was dealing, but she was sentenced to 15 years. A sentence reduction released her in March, after she had served 11.

Washington Post

Another sad chapter of U.S. 'justice' and 'law and order' is slowly coming to an end. Most sentence reduction stories are this encouraging, hopefully, that will change too.

The next step? Follow through on more than twenty-five years of studies regarding lifetime sentencing disparities for young black males.