California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a longtime proponent for the abolishment of mandatory minimum sentences, was in Washington, D.C., for the Congressional Black Caucus’ “Rethinking Federal Sentencing Symposium.” The symposium convened to urge Congress to repeal the federal drug sentencing laws that have decimated urban communities and have not lowered crime rates — especially mandatory minimums and the disparity between powder and crack cocaine prosecution.
The symposium featured speeches by Attorney General Eric Holder; U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Ga.; Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas; and members of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) and the Sentencing Project, Waters believes unprincipled members of Congress used the cocaine-induced death of Boston Celtics draftee Len Bias in 1986 — which shocked the nation — as an excuse to pass stringent laws under the veil of “waging a war against drugs.”
“… I gave a little bit of the history today talking about Len Bias and how this was used as an opportunity to come up with a law to create the onerous mandatory minimum sentencing that has caused a lot of black males to be incarcerated,” Waters says.
Waters added that she has an elevated sense of optimism because of several monumental factors: The installation of the first African American president; the appointment of the first African American U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder; and that Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.; and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va.; chair of the Judicial Committee and chair of the Judicial subcommittee, respectively.
But according to Waters, there is an equally important reason to eliminate mandatory minimums.
“[The] prison industrial complex is an awful, awful blight on the state of California and on our history. And the amount of money, the billions of dollars, disproportionately spent to lock up these low level drug offenders, etc., and because of that and other things we are going broke,” she says ominously. “In 2010, we don’t know how we’re going to make the payroll. They are going to have to release nonviolent offenders, not only to relieve the pressure on the prisons, but to relieve the amount of money we have to spend on them.”
