Piper Kerman TOUGH ON CRIME STILL RACIST
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ call for harsh sentences won’t make us any safer
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ directive to federal prosecutors last week to pursue the most severe penalties possible when charging a person with a crime was unsurprising coming from someone with his background. Yet it is stunning in its misdirection.
During his confirmation hearings, Sessions took great pains to deny allegations of racism. But his memo raises questions about his sincerity.
Sessions says he wants to make America safer. Evidence shows that harsh punishment is the exact wrong way to go. In 2014, the National Research Council published an expansive report on The Growth of Incarceration in the United States that examined the dramatic rise of the prison population and its effects on our country. It concludes that the evidence “demonstrates that lengthy prison sentences are ineffective as a crime control measure.”
AT ODDS WITH FACTS
The memo from Sessions puts the federal criminal system at odds with what many states and municipalities have worked to change; reliance on harsh punishment is counterproductive if what we want is public safety.
The American juvenile justice system is a prime example of recognizing this fact and doing things differently: Since 2003, the number of children held in juvenile prisons has declined by about half as more kids are held accountable in their communities rather than being exiled. At the same time, youth crime has declined and is at a 30-year low.
The states that have reduced their adult prison populations the most — New York (26%), New Jersey (26%), California (23%) — have simultaneously enjoyed the biggest declines in violent and property crime, beating the national averages. Why? Again, we have clarity: Each state made their system less punitive while still providing for accountability in the community for people who commit a less serious crime.
Aiming for the same results, Mississippi, Georgia and Oklahoma have all recently passed criminal justice reforms. Oklahoma would like to shed the stigma of incarcerating more women than any place on earth.
When we think about inequality and harsh punishment, it’s important to note a longstanding fact: During the rise of mass incarceration, women have been the fastest-growing population in the criminal justice system. If you’re wondering whether you somehow missed a female crime wave, you indeed did not. Rather, we have spent a generation doubling down on harsh punishment for drug offenses and property crimes, the reason we put most women in prison or jail.
I was sent to prison for a nonviolent drug offense, a first offense, and was incarcerated in a federal prison for 13 months. In Sessions’ memo to federal prosecutors, he states: “It is of the utmost importance to enforce the law fairly and consistently.” But in the prison where I did time, there were other women, black women, serving life sentences for crimes remarkably similar to my own. Jeff Sessions’ philosophies and public record point to the reason for this injustice. TREATMENT WORKS BETTER Sessions says he wants to get a handle on the opioid crisis. The public health community, local governments and law enforcement community are united in calling for prevention and treatment, not incarceration. The only impact of being the country that incarcerates more of our people than any other democracy is a decimated black community.
Presented with these facts, the previous administration, joined by Republicans and Democrats, began reforms that provide for public safety while dismantling a racist system. Reforms made by the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 2014 recognized that federal sentences did not help public safety, and aimed to right-size penalties to fit crimes. Sentences were reduced by about 25%. The previous U.S. attorneys general instructed federal prosecutors to use discretion and broader considerations when deciding what kind of sentence would be just.
In talking about harsh punishment, it’s telling that Sessions is from Alabama, the state that ranks seventh for using the death penalty and will soon be home to the first national memorial to the victims of lynching.
Harsh punishment is not equally applied in the USA. People of color are always more likely to face it. The truth is that harsh punishment is not intended to make the community safer; it is intended to keep unequal power structures in place. If Sessions is not a racist as he proclaims, then he should want to distance himself from a certifiably racist system, not let it rise again.
Piper Kerman is the author of Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, the basis for the Netflix series.