« Dreier gets 20-year federal prison sentence | Main | SCOTUS grants stay in Virginia capital case raising intriguing double jeopardy claim »
July 14, 2009
More notable sentencing reform talk from Attorney General Holder
Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder gave this talk at the NAACP’s Centennial Convention. Here are the sections that speak to sentencing issues:
[W]e must keep working to build a more effective, more efficient, more equitable system of criminal justice. A system of justice that focuses not just on punishing criminals, but also on preventing crime. A system of justice that focuses not just on locking people away, but also on integrating former offenders back into their communities so they can build productive, law-abiding lives. And, a system of justice that applies the same penalties for offenses involving cocaine – regardless of its form.
I have seen first-hand the effect that disparities in drug sentences have had on our communities. In my career as a prosecutor and judge, I saw too often the cost borne by the community when promising, capable young people sacrificed years of their futures for non-violent offenses. Let me be clear: the Department of Justice will never back down from its duty to protect our citizens and our neighborhoods from drugs, or from the violence that all-too-often accompanies the drug trade. But we must discharge this duty in a way that protects our communities as well as the public’s confidence in the justice system.
It is not justice to hand down disparate prison sentences for materially similar crimes. It is not justice to continue our adherence to a sentencing scheme that disproportionately affects some Americans, and some communities, more severely than others. Our goal is simple: to ensure that our sentencing system is tough and predictable, but also fair.
Some related old and new posts:
- Important and heartening new speech from AG Eric Holder
- Is real fundamental, structural change on the horizon for the federal sentencing system?
- House hearing on "Mandatory Minimums and Unintended Consequences"
- Will AG Holder really lead a "new birth of freedom" in prison nation?
- Are we on the verge of a new changed era concerning federal sentencing law and policy?
- Why I fear change will not come quickly to federal sentencing policy and practice
- Whither the Webb reform bill ... does it weather or wither?
July 14, 2009 at 09:18 AM | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e20115710e45cf970c
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference More notable sentencing reform talk from Attorney General Holder:
Comments
When this double speaking, extremist, left wing, criminal lover speaks, the emergency rooms should start to prepare for incoming crime victims. He means to loose 100's of 1000's of vicious predators on minority neighborhood, never on lawyer residential neighborhoods.
Why does he love ultra-violent predators so much? They generate lawyer jobs, funding, and power.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jul 14, 2009 9:50:46 AM
S.C. Have you paid your monthly dues to the flat earth society yet?
Posted by: anon | Jul 14, 2009 10:24:37 AM
S.C. doesn't pay dues to the flat earth society, she collects them. The Flat Earthers need leadership, after all.
Have you ever noticed that, according to S.C., nobody but lawyers EVER act out of a desire for "jobs, funding and power." Everybody else is apparently in it for pure altruism.
Posted by: Gritsforbreakfast | Jul 14, 2009 1:20:24 PM
Personal remarks show frustration in the traverse.
All providers seek to maximize profit. In profit, one adds value, and resells the product or service for more. The lawyer differs. What he does is often worthless, so he seeks the rent. In rent seeking, no value is added, and the rent seeker uses the violent power of government to extract money from hard working people. The payer gets to stay out of jail for refusing to pay taxes or does not get pistol whipped by federal marshals seizing his property.
The left wing ideologues have a blind spot and refuse to understand, rent seeking is a polite term for armed robbery, and the payer gets nothing back. The lawyer makes 99% of policy decisions of government. Government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCE. It is barely more than a criminal syndicate, and does nothing well. As to the authority of government stemming from the voter? The elected officials are figureheads making a tiny difference at the margins. No one may get elected who does not go along with the main purpose, lawyer rent seeking. Lawyers will seek his personal destruction with an infinity of lawyer gotchas and infractions of worthless rules.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jul 14, 2009 1:43:27 PM
Anon: (Grits is obviously not a lawyer.) If you are a lawyer, do you believe, minds can be read, rare future accidents can be foreseen, that a fictional character should set the standards of due care, that 12 strangers can detect the truth by using their gut feelings? If you are a lawyer your modern views had to be indoctrinated out, so you could be persuaded of the above falsities. The lawyer makes $billion decisions and puts people to death based on these myths. These are psychotic delusions.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jul 14, 2009 2:53:52 PM
S.C., your comments are routinely filled with personal insults and sweepingly false generalizations. Don't complain when you get what you give.
When you assume up front that "No one may get elected who does not go along with the main purpose, lawyer rent seeking," you make yourself irrelevant from the get-go. For starters it's just false - take it from someone who's worked in dozens of elections. Beyond that, can't never could, as the saying goes, and it contributes nothing constructive to constantly beat the drums that the game is fixed and nothing can be done. If that's true, what's the point of arguing? Anyone who believes the crazy schtick you do should take up arms and revolt, not whine incessantly in blog comments.
Posted by: Gritsforbreakfast | Jul 15, 2009 11:16:42 AM
If I claimed Martians were behind the crime rate increase, you would ignore me. I love personal insult, but I know it is intellectual junk food. My characterizations have elements, each supported by facts. So, criminal cult enterprise. Each word in that phrase has a lengthy set of factual proofs. For example, there are three prongs to the cult aspect of the legal profession.
1) the indoctrination methods of 1L.
2) The supernatural core doctrines.
3) The Draconian discipline system that maintains orthodoxy, and personally destroys any substantive dissent, without recourse. Feminist and race critical studies are not substantive challenges. Rather they are product development for the cult, by generating new concepts of land piracy.
Ask, and I will gladly explain to any depth to which you care to dive. In general, I have 10 layers to reach with anyone interested. Each of the above prongs has massive data and methodology to review.
Try ignoring me. You cannot because the points are cogent. You and the other left wing ideologues here, including Prof. Berman, represent the interest of government workers and lawyers, people who profit from crime, and who lose from any decrease in the crime rate. Neither of you ever presents a fact serving the interest of crime victims. This is a left wing blog that needs a full time truth squad to rebut the selective presentation of the facts, amounting to lying by omission.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jul 15, 2009 8:18:31 PM
Perhaps, only physical measures can remedy the takeover of the three branches of government by this criminal syndicate. Violence is unpredictable, and a threat to 1776. Too risky.
What I do call for is a Lincoln class executive to fulfill the oath to protect the Constitution, and to lawfully end the insurrection of the criminal syndicate, and by force if necessary, albeit with due process, of course.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jul 15, 2009 8:24:52 PM
