Federal drug laws develop a labeling problem. When you hear the term "drug trafficker," you might think about Pablo Escobar or Walter White, but the reality is that under federal law, drug traffickers include people who buy pseudo-ephedrine for their methamphetamine dealer; function 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 based on the exact same severe 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 reason 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 leads to at least a 5- or ten-year mandatory jail sentence. That's a lot of time in federal jail for lots of people who are minor parts of drug trade, the huge majority 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 deals with a lot of drug cases., I would have sent 1,092 of my fellow people to federal prison for compulsory minimum sentences ranging from sixty months to life without the possibility of release.
The numbers can't communicate the absurd catastrophe of everything. This is how he explains a recent drug trafficking case:
I just recently sentenced a group of more than twenty defendants on meth trafficking conspiracy charges. All of them plead guilty. Eighteen were 'tablet smurfers,' as federal prosecutors put it, suggesting their role totaled up to regularly purchasing and delivering cold medication to meth cookers in exchange for very little, low-grade amounts to feed their serious dependencies. Many were jobless or underemployed. A number of were single moms. They did not sell or straight distribute meth; there were no stockpiles of cash, weapons or counter surveillance devices. Yet 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 defendants-- drug conspiracy defense attorneys men and women referred to as "street-level dealerships", "couriers/mules", and "renter/loader/lookout/ enabler/users"-- received five- or ten-year compulsory jail sentences. This is particularly real for crack-cocaine offenders, most of whom are black; regardless of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, offering a small quantity of fracture cocaine (28 grams) carries the very same necessary minimum sentence-- 5 years-- as selling 500 grams of powder cocaine.
This is the reality for which proponents of serious federal drug laws need to account. We can not pretend that heavy sentences for women like Kemba Smith and men like Jamel Dossie are the fluke errors of overboard laws. We need to confess that our sentencing of minor participants in the drug trade to prison terms meant for the leaders of big drug organizations-- as a common incident, not as an exception. As a result, we unnecessarily send to prison lots of minor culprits for extended periods. Judge Bennett decries the human expenses of these sentences:
If prolonged mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug user really worked, one might be able to justify them. However there is no proof that they do. I have actually seen how they leave hundreds of thousands of children parent-less and thousands of aging, infirm and passing away moms and dads childless. They damage households and mightily fuel the cycle of poverty and addiction.
Here, again, we have evidence that Judge Bennett is right: long necessary sentences are unneeded for the majority of drug transgressors. In 2002 and 2003, Michigan and New York repealed mandatory sentences for drug culprits and provided judges the power to impose much shorter sentences, probation, or drug treatment. The sky didn't fall, however criminal activity 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 mandatory laws written for the most serious, large-scale drug dealers applied to the men and women on the lowest rungs of the drug trade, and he has seen it occur a lot. We once pictured that severe necessary sentences would be used to deal with the leaders of big drug operations. It's time our federal drug laws were fit to individuals that they truly target.
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