AG Mukasey makes ugly cracks about crack retroactivity when announcing new crime initiative

As detailed in this official DOJ statement, in "a speech before the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey today announced the President is seeking $200 million in funding for a new Violent Crime Reduction Partnership Initiative for Fiscal Year 2009." 

I am very pleased to hear that the Administration is going to focus crime-fighting energies and monies on violent crimes.  However, I was very troubled to see from this Reuters report that AG Mukasey could not resist taking a silly swipe at the US Sentencing Commission's crack retroactivity decision.  Here's are excerpts from the Reuters article:

A pending early release of hundreds of crack-cocaine dealers whose sentences have been judged unfairly harsh threatens to cause more crime in U.S. cities, Attorney General Michael Mukasey warned on Thursday.  But some mayors said Mukasey was exaggerating the threat and described the real problem as a lack of federal assistance for programs aimed at helping ex-convicts return to society.

Mukasey told the U.S. Conference of Mayors about 1,600 convicted criminals — "many of them violent gang members" — may be released as early as March under a decision by the U.S. agency that sets sentencing guidelines for federal crimes. "A sudden influx of criminals from federal prison into your communities could lead to a surge in new victims with a tragic but predictable result," Mukasey said.

But Kevin Burns, the mayor of North Miami, Florida, said Mukasey seemed to be "striking fear" and it was most likely that only non-violent offenders would be released early. "I think it was possibly overstating it a bit," Burns told Reuters after the speech....

Some mayors said they agreed with reducing cocaine sentence disparities but shared concerns over early releases. The biggest problem is a lack of programs to help ex-convicts, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Mayor Bill Finch said.  "A lot of these people feel like society has thrown them on the trash heap," he told Reuters. "The more we get tough on crime, the more we fill these prisons up, the more we create a balloon at the end that becomes the cities' problem."

Mukasey acknowledged a need for education, job training, drug treatment and housing to help ex-offenders, but said these may be unavailable for the early-release crack prisoners.  "We need time to develop all of that and roll it out, time that blanket retroactivity might not allow us," he said.

It is a telling and disappointing reality that city mayors better understand and talk more responsibly about federal sentencing realities than does the Attorney General.  The USSC's new crack rules are carefully structured to avoid early release of offenders likely to endanger public safety and they do not amount to "blanket retroactivity."  Moreover, the USSC has been seriously discussing — with a DOJ official a part of the discussion — crack reform for more than a year and the serious prospect of some early releases has been well-known since at least May 2007.  If DOJ would get serious about real solutions instead of scaring folks about unreal problems, perhaps it would have the time that AG Mukasey says he needs.

Jeralyn at TalkLeft here and the folks at FAMM justifiably assail AG Mukasey for fear mongering.

UPDATE:  Friday's Los Angeles Times has this effective article about AG Mukasey's crack comments, including lots of appropriate and critical analysis of the AG's assertions:

The bleak assessment offered by Mukasey was challenged by inmate advocacy groups, public defenders, judges and even some of the big-city mayors listening to his remarks.  "In the grand sweep of the nation's criminal justice system, the release of this minuscule number of prisoners will not affect crime rates.  It will, however, significantly improve the perceived fairness of our federal criminal justice system," said Paul Cassell, a professor at the University of Utah law school.

Cassell -- a former federal judge who led a policymaking arm of the federal courts that supported the sentence reductions -- noted that no prisoner would be released under the program unless a judge decided the inmate was no longer a threat to the community.  "All of these prisoners were going to be released in the future," Cassell said, "so the retroactivity provision simply provides a slight acceleration of their release date."

The number eligible, equal to about 10% of the federal prison population, amounts to the most sweeping act of federal clemency in history.  But it is a small fraction of the inmates released from state and federal prisons every year.  "About 700,000 people are coming out of prison this year, many of whom were convicted of a violent offense. So now the change means we'll have 701,600 instead. Seems like he's kind of missing the point," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, an inmate advocacy group in Washington.  Mauer said that the criticism "is really an insult to the judges."

Mukasey himself was a federal judge for 18 years before retiring in 2006.

"I think [Mukasey] is wrong," said Michael Nachmanoff, the federal public defender for much of Virginia. "First, the number of people getting out in March may be much lower, and second, probation and the courts are more than capable of supervising these individuals."