No low level offender
Somebody needs to remind Eric Holder that the job of the Justice Department is to put bad guys in jail instead of let them out. Bu letting bad guys go free is Eric Holder's specialty one that goes back to the days of the Marc Rich pardon.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/23/clemency-after-10-years-in-prison-doj-announcing-overhaul/
My favorite part is the reference to "low-level offenders". Here's a news flash for Holder: Low level offenders don't spend ten years in prison to begin with.
6 comments:
It is easy to understand why Eric Holder would want to release "Low Offenders" when viewing the drug arrest statistics. Drug offenders who are Black, represent for slightly less than half the population of convicted individuals. Half of the drug arrests are for sale and distribution of drugs. So, one would expect Holder to say that these individuals are "my people" when applying the law.
Someone needs to tell Holder that "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
Squid
Part of the reasoning is the preponderence of heavy sentences for sales of crack cocaine which is much more insidious than powedered cocaine in terms of addition.
Sure they do Gary. Maybe you spent your entire career taking out big bad kingpins, but people with the drive, capital, and organization to build drug distribution outfits know exactly how to manipulate the law. They set things up with a couple of sacrificial lambs, so that when they are caught, they can "turn in" the chosen victim, get a light sentence for their "cooperation," and that leaves quite a number of people who are little or no danger to society serving life sentences, or 240 months, etc. (They don't know anything, so prosecutors don't give them any consideration.)
If you don't know that, you aren't looking.
Siarlys,
I seem to recall I explained that issue to you a long time ago. You don't work your way down the ladder rather up the ladder. A lot of corrupt third world countries do engage in that , but that is not acceptable here. Prosecutors can provide a protective layer against that kind of abuse.
Yes Gary, you've explained the scope of your very limited understanding many times, and you betray profound ignorance every time you do so. I'm aware of the THEORY, that law enforcement agencies work up the ladder, not down. But:
1) Some prosecutorial and police agencies are much more interested in how many convictions they can rack up than in how culpable the individuals convicted are,
2) Most prosecutors and police have a murky view of just who and where the bad guys are, so they become awfully gullible to any "informant" who offers to "cooperate," and easily become deceived as to who is "up" and who is "down."
3) As I said, sophisticated kingpins consider a few years in prison an acceptable cost of racking up millions of dollars, and are skilled at setting up someone to be the "leader" of the operation right from the start -- or rather, positioned so they can SAY s/he was the leader of the operation.
4) People at or near the top have more information to offer, whereas low-level people don't know much, and what they do know, the police already learned from someone higher up. So, those who have information to trade get light sentences, and in the process, they turn in a bunch of small fry, who get large sentences because prosecutors have nothing to gain by giving them a break.
You may have operated on some ethereal level where this sort of thing never happens, but the federal prisons are full of people who could tell you otherwise. (Yes, there are ALSO some people serving long sentences who are guilty as charges -- it takes some time and probity to sort one from the other.)
Siarlys,
You've been watching too many movies.
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