It truly is a new day in the US justice system. For the first time ever the government is offering leniency in the case of non-violent drug crimes.
Does this mean that everyone’s getting out? Nah. But the White House has tasked defense lawyers with suggesting inmates whose sentences were overly severe due to disproportionate application of drug laws on minorities.
You can almost hear the smiles forming on the faces of all those convicted marijuana users.
Every president has the ability to pardon convicts. Most of them traditionally wait for their last day in office to carry them out. Right now, Obama is drafting a list of hundreds, maybe thousands, of drug sentence-related convicts to get their time in prison dramatically reduced by his hand.
Remember those hardcore drug laws that punished crack users (mostly Black) waaay harder than cocaine users (mostly White)? Obama changed that in 2010 making sentencing for crack convictions less disproportionate. And now a bill is before Congress that if passed will reduce the sentences for up to 12,000 inmates who were sentenced under those old laws.
Check it out. We might kind of have a government for the people after all…that’s watching you 24/7. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
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GIANT Life (@giant_life) July 09, 2013