Neuroscientist Carl Hart: We Need to Stop Jeff Sessions from Escalating the Racist War on Drugs

[applegrove]

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/15/neuroscientist_carl_hart_we_need_to

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ANTHONY PAPA: Well, you know, Amy, I agree with Eric Holder: This is totally dumb on crime. To go back to a failed—a proven failed policy and to enact—you know, to tell prosecutors to convict people at the harshest possible sentence is totally wrong. I’ll use myself as an example, you know, first-time, nonviolent offender. I was actually sentenced to two 15-to-life sentences under the Rockefeller drug laws in New York state, which was mandated by mandatory minimum sentencing, the same mandatory minimum sentencing laws that became in the federal system, that now Sessions wants the prosecutors to use to sentence even low-level, nonviolent drug offenders or even people who are addicted to drugs to many, many years in prison. It’s a proven fact that this policy wasted billions of dollars, and, more importantly, many human lives were wasted in this action in the past.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Carl Hart. So, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has released this memo that tells Justice Department prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges for drug offenses. So, explain exactly how this changes policy and what it will mean.

CARL HART: Well, what it means is that he—well, as you know, under Eric Holder, Eric Holder has suggested—or his memo said that we shouldn’t engage in those mandatory minimums. So he gave judges flexibility, whereas Jeff Sessions is encouraging the judges to go back to mandatory minimum. What that means is that people will get harsher sentences for drug-related violations now. And what that means ultimately—as Papa has said, we all know the drug war didn’t work. That’s not entirely true, because the drug war did work for certain segments of our population. And that’s where the crux of this policy really needs to be interrogated. It allows—Jeff Sessions is allowing us or is using drug policy to separate the people who we like from the people who we don’t like. And it provides a way to go after those people we don’t like, usually poor minority folks, without explicitly saying we don’t like those people. And that’s how drug law—that’s how drug law or drug policy has been enforced in this country. And so, if we allow Sessions to turn back the hands of time, then shame on all of us. The blood is on all of our hands, because we know the consequences of his proposed actions.


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