In 2001 Education Week told this story about the Bush Administration’s decision to be hard core in its enforcement of one part of the Higher Education Act.
When police found a small amount of marijuana residue in her car the day before her 19th birthday, Marisa Garcia was handed a ticket and sent on her way. After she was convicted of drug possession and paid a $415 fine, Ms. Garcia thought the incident could be put behind her.
But the California State University-Fullerton student later discovered that her minor scrape with the law had cost her much more: Ms. Garcia ended up losing her eligibility for federal student financial aid because of a change three years ago in the Higher Education Act.
“It was the first time I had ever been in trouble with the law,” said Ms. Garcia, who worked extra hours in a flower shop and turned to her family to help pay her tuition and expenses. “When I found out that if I was a murderer or child molester I would still be eligible, I really got mad.”
Hard to blame her. With cases like Garcia’s in mind, college students, financial-aid associations, and civil rights groups have been working since then to challenge or overturn the provision—with no luck. (335 organizations from American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers to the United Church of Christ favor overturning it.)
According to Ed Week, even Republican Congressman Mark Souder, the guy who introduced the 1998 legislation, has indicated that the law was never intended to “reach back” and affect students with past drug convictions. It was meant, said Souder’s office, to derail applications if kids were convicted of drug crimes while they were applying for aid. (An explanation that has its own illogic, but whatever.)
Yesterday one of the constitutional challenges to the law finally had its day in court, but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected it. A new Ed Week blog post has the details (and here’s the ruling itself).
Constitutionality aside, why in the world would we want to punish a kid for some past transgression—particularly a kid who is trying to go to college?
Remember that the average high school graduation rate in America’s largest cities is at 50 percent, with cities like Baltimore, Cleveland and Detroit graduating even fewer. It would seem that if a kid does graduate and wants to go to college, we should be moving heaven and earth to help.
But instead we’ve got this idiotic provision that since 2001 has reportedly denied aid to approximately 200,000 students.
These are the days when I start to think some of our lawmakers really don’t like our nation’s children very well.
PS: And how has the media covered the story? Other than Ed Week and the wonkiest law blogs—I’ve found nothing. (Obviously, there are more important topics to explore.)
Another of the talented LA Weekly writers who’ve migrated elsewhere in the past year is Jeffrey Anderson. Jeff is an emblematic example of that much too rare breed, the crusading reporter. He has great street instincts, lives to afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted and rarely meets a wrong he doesn’t long to right. (While at the Weekly, he wrote about, among other topics, political corruption in Bell Gardens and Cudahy.)
Now Jeff lives in Baltimore and works for the town’s LA Weekly equivalent, the City Paper.
Earlier this year, I posted links to Jeff’s three-part series that connected dots in the LA-Baltimore drug connection,
Now, Jeff and his colleagues have been working on an investigative series that feels like it’s pulled straight from The Wire. This look at Baltimore’s shadow world involves the nexus of drug trafficking, respectable business and local politics.
Jeff sent me a link to the latest in the series yesterday. It’s an intriguing tale that makes for great reading and likely has many more chapters yet to come. But it’s scary stuff for any reporter to dig into, especially when one is working for the alternative weekly, not the town’s Tribune-owned, lawyer-heavy paper of record.
Here are the links to the pieces of the story thus far so you can follow along, and cheer Jeff on as he continues to dig.
3. Grave Accusations.…. in which a now dead prosecutor calls a local business man a “violent drug dealer.” (This last one’s by Jeff’s colleague, Van Smith.)
Photo above of murdered Baltimore-based Federal Prosecutor Jonathan Luna
On Wednesday, the LA City Council passed a resolution that asks Federal law enforcement to mind its own damn business when it comes to medical marijuana.
More accurately, the resolution supports the state in its push to get the Feds to back off. Last August, the Council tried on its own when it passed the an ordinance to regulate and oversee the medical marijuana trade in LA, and politely asked the DEA to stop launching 100-agent raids on lawful clinics. But the DEA blithely ignored the request and kept on raiding the marijuana clinics anyway. “We’re just enforcing the law,” DEA spokeswoman Sara Pullen told me when I reported on the issue last summer for both WLA and the LA Weekly.. (I believe I mentioned to Pullen that I could personally point out a couple of meth-dealer locations, the raiding of which might be a better use of her agency’s time, but she declined to take me up on the offer.)
With Wednesday’s resolution, sponsored by Dennis Zine, Janice Hahn, and Bill Rosendahl, (the lone No vote from Greig Smith) the Council is trying a new strategy by calling for support of California State Senate Joint Resolution 20. The state resolution asks the President and Congress to enact legislation to require the DEA and all Federal agencies and departments to “respect the compassionate use laws of states”. SJR 20 also requests Federal law enforcement to enforce Federal medical marijuana laws in a manner consistent with the laws of the State of California.
California Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, was passed 12 years ago, yet still the DEA continues to raid clinics, and arrest patients, although the charges rarely stick.
As recently as last month, I talked to a med marijuana patient who, in the course of a routine traffic stop, was asked by two LA sheriff’s deputies if he had any drugs or alcohol in his car. The man had just come from purchasing his month’s supply and answered honestly. Yes, he said, he did have a small amount of marijuana, but he had a prescription for the stuff and handed the officers both his just-purchased weed and his official state card. (Yeah, the guy was a real patient with a real medical condition, not a scammer just wanting to smoke out) The cops confiscated the weed and wrote up a misdemeanor citation meaning the guy had to take off work and show up in court. The judge promptly dropped the case as soon as the proper paperwork was produced. “Oh, yeah we get these all the time,” the bailiff told the man, explaining that the judge usually dropped the charges forthwith if the prescription was legit.
Meanwhile we have overcrowded courtrooms and a state, county and city budget crisis. So does this seem like a good use of your tax dollars? Read the rest of this entry »
Television has never seen a better dramatic series than “The Wire.” Period. The Sopranos gave us one of TV’s greatest characters. But if the Sopranos was grand drama, The Wire gave us great literature. I’m convinced that if Charles Dickens was alive today, he’d have been writing for the The Wire.
And he’d have been in good company. In addition to their own considerable gifts for storytelling, producers David Simon and Ed Burns were smart enough to hire a string of the best crime novelists in America to write for the show, and it showed. Richard Price and George Pelecanos are uniquely talented with inner city argot. Dennis Lehane (author of “Mystic River”) has been moving for years toward a form that combines the traditional detective novel with a kind of tragic sensibility.
Most Hollywood-produced cop shows, no matter how large their stable of “consultants,” usually end up with dialog that sounds like….well…..Hollywood. In contrast, The Wire” was consistently able to capture, not only the sound of street language, but its poetry.
Yet, the great dialog wasn’t the reason we watched. (And are still watching. I’ve just started over with Season One)
We tuned in because David Simon and company gave us weekly commentary on modern urban life with a nuanced authenticity rarely seen elsewhere—all packaged in form that was wildly engaging. And Simon did it using a nearly symphonic pattern of narrative layers and interweaves. We saw the wasteful futility of the war on drugs interwoven with the impossible pressures placed on the cops who are asked to somehow eradicate the drug mess…Into those themes was threaded the hypocrisy and compromise that informs American politics….the absurd and tragic state of the nation’s inner city schools….and finally, the profit-driven shredding of the soul of our country’s newspapers.
Stunning. And all presented through the relentlessly human medium of the show’s remarkable cast of indelible characters.
To me it was season four, about the Baltimore school system and the catastrophic affects of No Child Left Behind, that was the best—and the most emotionally devastating.
But this season was brilliant too.
As a new round of buyouts is announced at the LA Times and the ongoing turf battles at City Hall over gang policy manage to fail all concerned….it’s been somehow steadying to know that we’re not unique with our messes. The Wire got there first.
But what about you? Are you a Wire fan? If so, why does it matter to you?
I’ve got a crazy day, but here are a few short takes to chew on:
*The ACLU just released this video on the Crack/Powder sentencing issue:
*The Nebraska supreme court is hearing a case this week about whether a State Trooper should be allowed to keep his job despite membership in the Klu Klux Klan. Here’s the Omaha Herald story.
*You think good teachers should be paid a six figure salary? This proposed Washington Heights charter school plans to do just that. (Chapeau tip to Eduwonk.)
*And, according to the Washington Post, this Boston area charter high school guru has a radical idea about how to cure the drop out rate—with a sort of drop out savings account. (Just read it.)
AND LAST….AND PROBABLY BEST:
*A new, worthwhile-sounding documentary: Troop 1500: Girl Scouts Beyond Bars Here’s some of the info:
Their mothers may be convicted thieves, murderers and drug dealers, but the girls of Troop 1500 want to be doctors, social workers and marine biologists. With meetings once a month at Hilltop Prison in Gatesville, Texas, this innovative Girl Scout program brings daughters together with their inmate mothers, offering them a chance to rebuild their broken relationships….
An estimated 1.5 million children have incarcerated parents and 90 percent of female inmates are single parents. Their daughters are six times more likely to land in the juvenile justice system. TROOP 1500 poignantly reveals how an inspired yet controversial effort by the more than 90-year old Girl Scouts organization is working to help these at-risk young girls deal with their unique circumstances and break the cycle of crime within families.
Troop 1500 is part of a group of films about women, criminal justice and prison—all of which can be purchased by those looking for a night at the movies that features more in the way of content than say, Jumper.
That new Federal rule that brings the sentencing for crack cocaine closer in line to the sentencing for powder cocaine (instead of it’s present 100 to 1 disparity) is set to kick in next Monday, March 3. As I mentioned two weeks ago, Attorney General Michael Mukasy has tried to derail the sentencing revisions from being retroactive, contending at a Congressional hearing, that U.S. communities would be overrun by violent drug-dispensing felons should the changes, put in place by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, be enacted.
This morning, however, more than fifty community leaders from all over the nation are showing up for what is being called “Crack the Disparity” Lobby Day to try to persuade their various congress people to settle the issue by passing crack cocaine sentencing reform themselves. Several versions of such bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate, most of them with bipartisan support.
(So buzz off Mukasy.)
In addition to press conferences and meetings with individual lawmakers, the citizen lobbyists will attend today’s hearing titled “Cracked Justice – Addressing the Unfairness in Cocaine Sentencing” before the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.
“My community has experienced the harm caused by drug abuse,” said Howard Saffold, a former Chicago police officer and participant in the “Crack the Disparity” Lobby Day cosponsored by The Sentencing Project. “We need services to treat people who are addicted to crack cocaine and employment opportunities for the young men who have, for various reasons, chosen to sell it. Excessive prison terms do not address the real problems.”
By the way, today’s Lobby Day is also being cosponsored by such notorious scofflaws and drug-huggers as the American Bar Association, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the United Methodist Church.
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NOTE: I just watched Sunday night’s edition of 60 Minutes, in particular the segment on former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. (Thank you, TiVo.) I strongly suggest you watch it. The segment, which CBS effectively buried by scheduling it to run opposite the Oscars, speaks for itself. (The other segments—on the murder of reporter, Chauncey Bailey, and a repeat of an earlier episode on the disappearance of bees—are also worth watching.)
Finally, finally, finally the Feds have made a truly sane choice when it comes to the crack/powder sentencing controversy. After voting earlier to repair the disparity between the mandatory minimums handed out for crack cocaine and those handed out for powder, on Tuesday, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to let that change be retroactive. This means that approximately 19,500 federal prison inmates, close to 90 percent of them black, will be able to ask for a reduction in their crack cocaine sentences.
Prior to this pair of remarkably level-headed decisions, if you attempted to sell five grams of crack cocaine—even if you were a first time offender—you’d get at least a five-year trip to the slammer. But it’d take getting caught with a hundred grams of powder to get you the same sentence—in other words a 100 to 1 difference..
Alarmists and naysayers—including Attorney General Michael Mukasey speaking for the Bush administration—have been shrieking for months that thousands of dangerous felons will be let loose to roam the streets and terrorize the citizenry if the sentencing commission had the guts to make this move. As you’ll remember, Hillary Clinton was dead set against retroactivity. Rudy Giuliani has been nattering endlessly about how such a decision might bring down the empire.
Most of those eligible could receive no more than a two-year cut in their prison terms, but roughly 3,800 inmates could be released from prison within a year after the March 3 effective date of Tuesday’s decision. Federal judges will have the final say whether to reduce sentences.
The commissioners said the delay until March would give judges and prison officials time to deal with public safety and other issues.
The horror.
It should be noted that the sentencing structures still aren’t even-steven.. Even after the changes, crack convictions will result in sentences that are two to five times as long as those for powder. But at least it ain’t 100 to one.
To better understand the total lunacy of the old sentencing structure, it helps to look at the physical difference between crack and powder.
Why are so many progressives unhappy at the thought of Hillary Clinton becoming the Democratic nominee? Here’s a perfect case in point:
This past weekend all the Democratic presidential wannabes spoke at what is known as the Iowa Brown & Black Forum. (The Republican wannabes were also invited but they declined.)
The candidates were asked all the usual questions and, for the most part, gave all the expected answers. But on one issue in particular Hillary differed markedly from her colleagues—and that had to do with the recent recommendation by the federal sentencing commission that people caught with crack cocaine should have sentences more in line those for powder cocaine. This was an issue of interest to the forum because powder tends to be a drug favored by those whiter and wealthier than those who favor crack.
When asked about her own policy, Clinton said she agreed with the feds’ recommendation for equalizing the sentences, but she opposed making the sentencing changes retroactive
“I have problems with retroactivity,” she said. “It’s something a lot of communities will be concerned about as well.” Obama, Edwards, Richarson, Dodd, Kucinich said they were in favor of the sentencing change being applied to those already serving time.
Now before we get to the reality of how such a sentencing change would play out, lets parse what Clinton said: Although she agrees that disproportionate punishments for crack versus cocaine are wrong for the future, she doesn’t feel that past disproportionate punishments are wrong.
To show this POV for the whacked logic that it is, let’s use an absurd example: Imagine that, as a country, we used to lock people up for twenty years for jaywalking. But then we finally came to our senses and realized that a 20-year jolt for crossing the street against the light was pretty harsh. So, we changed the sentencing structure, and dropped jaywalking to a traffic citation, where it belongs. But using Clinton’s present logic, all those poor jaywalkers who are, say, only two years into a 20-year sentence are just going to have hang in with whole two decades of hard time.
Why is Clinton taking a stand that goes against basic fairness and logic?
The U.S. Sentencing commission is on the verge of righting the wrong created in the 1980’s when changes in sentencing laws slammed anyone caught with crack cocaine with much harsher sentences than equivalent offenses involving powder cocaine.
(Now if “liberal” California can just get its !&^%$@!*! act together and address this and other sentencing reforms so desperately needed in our prison-haunted, Golden State.)
Under pressure from federal judges, inmate advocacy groups and civil rights organizations, federal authorities are considering a sweeping cut in prison sentences that could bring early release for thousands of federal inmates.
The proposal being weighed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission would shave an average of at least two years off the sentences of 19,500 federal prisoners, about 1 in 10 in the 200,000-inmate system. More than 2,500 of them, mainly those who have already served lengthy sentences, would be eligible for release within a year if the rule is adopted.
Such a mass commutation would be unprecedented: No other single rule in the two-decade history of the Sentencing Commission has affected nearly as many inmates. And no single law or act of presidential clemency, such as grants of amnesty to draft resistors and conscientious objectors after World War II and the Vietnam War, has affected so many people at one time.
[snip]
Most experts believe that the penalties exaggerate the relative harmfulness of crack compared with powder cocaine. Another concern is that setting such low thresholds for punishing crack offenders has led to the lengthy imprisonment of low-level street dealers, couriers and lookouts, rather than major drug traffickers.
The disparity is under siege on several fronts. There is bipartisan legislation in Congress that would narrow the penalties for crack compared with those for powder cocaine. The Supreme Court is considering a case this term that would give judges even more discretion to reduce sentences in crack cases.
The widely differing treatment of crack offenders is “fundamentally unjust,” said Reggie B. Walton, a federal judge in Washington.
As a top White House drug-control official in the 1980s, Walton advocated for tougher sentences in crack cases. But he said the penalties in hindsight had become too severe….
Seventy percent of all of the 2 million inmates in American prisons are doing time for drug and alcohol-related crimes. Only 15 percent of those prisoners are treated for their addiction.
In the course of my work, I seen the effects of this lack of treatment demonstrated anecdotally, over and over again. So many guys I’ve known can’t seem to get out of the revolving door incarceration cycle because, despite initial good intentions when they’re released from prison, most have never been treated for their addictions (or for the underlying conditions that created them). This usually also means they have not developed the necessary emotional tools to stay off drugs when the going gets rough on the outside, which it inevitably does. (Heck, the going gets rough at times for all of us.)
So, at some point they hit a bump in the road, and start using again, at first just a little, then a lot. Then they don’t report to their parole officers because they know they’ll test dirty. And then they’re on the run. And before long, they’re arrested again for absconding….or whatever. And they go back to prison.
It’s depressingly predictable. Human lives that might otherwise have promise continue to be wasted. And the tax payers pick up the tab. Nobody wins.
Right now, I have two people calling me collect from the LA County jail who are in the last stage of this dispiriting cycle. And it ain’t the first time they’ve run this track, not by a long shot.
So to me, the San Quentin program sounds like a smart strategy that is desperately needed and should be replicated ASAP.
And just so this post would have an invigorating sound track, I located the following:
April 29th, 2008 by 
Celeste Fremon
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