On Tuesday the state’s Supreme Judicial Court will hear an appeal by the Middlesex District Attorney’s office challenging a trial judge’s decision to depart from the mandatory minimum sentence set by statute for a drug crime and to impose a shorter sentence instead.
The District Attorney, citing the SJC’s decision in a 1995 case, argues that where a statute imposes a mandatory minimum sentence, judges have absolutely no discretion to lower that sentence, and therefore the trial judge in this case improperly reduced the sentence imposed on the defendant, Imran Laltaprasad, from 3 1/2 years to 2 1/2 years. (Laltaprasad was convicted of possessing less than 5 grams of heroin and cocaine. He was carrying the drugs in his prosthetic leg, the result of a violent assault for which his attackers received 2-year sentences.) Unless and until the Legislature amends current laws imposing mandatory minimum sentences, the D.A. argues, judges must adhere to those laws, which were enacted in 1980, during the earliest days of the war on drugs.
Ah yes, the war on drugs — file under “seemed like a good idea at the time.” It was the cornerstone of Governor Ed King’s plan to make Massachusetts a safer place, regardless of how much money we might need to spend building prisons.
Thirty-six years later, things look different. And what we know now that we didn’t know (but may have suspected) back then forms the basis of many of the arguments Mr. Laltaprasad’s attorneys are making to affirm the trial judge’s decision reducing the sentence in his case.
We know that mandatory minimum sentences are applied in a racially discriminatory manner (and Mr. Laltaprasad is a member of a racial minority, who comprise three-quarters of the persons on whom mandatory minimum sentences are imposed).
We also know that in cases involving mandatory minimum sentences, it is the prosecutor rather than the judge who decides on the sentence (in this case, the D.A.’s office elected to charge Mr. Laltaprasad with a “second or subsequent” offense, for which the mandatory minimum is 3 1/2 years).
We also know that drug addition is a chronic, relapsing brain disease for which incarceration is an inappropriate and ineffective remedy.
Together, these arguments raise important federal and state constitutional questions concerning equal protection, cruel and unusual punishment, and the separation of powers, as the briefs filed Mr. Laltaprasad’s attorneys as well as by friends of the court argue.
The Middlesex D.A.’s office responded to these arguments not by rebutting them, but by moving to strike those parts of the record supplying their evidentiary support. In opposing the D.A.’s motion to strike, Mr. Laltaprasad’s attorneys cited a rather well-known U.S. Supreme Court decision: it “is regrettable that the Commonwealth’s only response to this data is to ask that it be ignored…Perhaps at some point in the history of American jurisprudence it was common for courts to overlook data showing the crippling effects of unconstitutional laws. But that time has long passed. See Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 493-95 & n.11 (1954).”
Oof.
The Laltaprasad case is the fourth on Tuesday’s docket, which means it will be heard around 10:30. You can watch the argument here.
and reform our criminal justice system.
It’s long past time we started to get smart on crime.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
There’s got to be a competent and experienced prosecutor in Middlesex County who also believes in civil liberties and the rule of law. And no, my boy Michael Sullivan wasn’t the one to do this unfortunately.
Also a greatly informative and insightful piece as always HP
The deadline to file for a new candidate against Ryan has passed.
…and even if she were we are in fact still within the timeframe for another candidate to collect signatures.
I think this is unfair, particularly because the DA’s position is that the judge failed to follow the statute. In what sense do you mean that she doesn’t believe in the rule of law? Moreover, the defendant didn’t raise the constitutional issues below. I’m just sayin’.
How can mandatory minima be applied in a racial manner. If it’s truly mandatory doesn’t that mean it applies to all? Also, how can a prosecutor decide on a sentence that is mandated? If the prosecutor goes above the minimum that’s a problem with prosecutorial discretion, not with the fact that it could have been lower. Besides, it should be for the statute law and not judicial discretion to decide the appropriate consequences for various offenses IMO.
it’s probably because the criminal justice system is not a computer.
A mandatory minimum sentence applies to everyone who is convicted of the underlying charge to which that sentence applies. Prosecutors have great leeway in deciding what charges to bring, and the exercise of their discretion largely determines what sentence is imposed on the person convicted. As Chief Justice Gants reported (link in post), in one recent year, 450 defendants were given mandatory minimum sentences on governing drug offenses, and racial and ethnic minorities comprised 75% of them.
The problem is not that prosecutors are going above the minimum — it’s that the charges to which mandatory minimums apply are being brought disproportionately against persons of color.
1. Rich suburbanites abuse cocaine. Inner city blacks abuse crack. Mandatory minimums for the former are much less stringent than for the latter.
2. “School zone” violations also apply to parks. In suburbs, where affluent whites live, little of the area of the town is a school zone. In cities, especially where minorities live, it is very hard to NOT be in a “school zone”. Adult blacks who conduct informal transactions in their homes with other adult blacks are often hit by “school zone” sentencing because their homes are often in school zones.
3. Many of these laws specify much lower thresholds for the amount of a controlled substance to trigger a “possession with intent to distribute” charge in a school zone. This far more serious charge therefore hits urban blacks far more often than suburban whites.
Between these two aspects, the resulting sentences fall MUCH harder on blacks and Hispanics than on whites.
What is the justification for stiffer penalties for crack vs. powder? Is it that much more dangerous? I assume anybody who defends the difference has the good sense to come up with an answer that doesn’t sound deliberately racist.
I’m perfectly fine with stiffer penalties in school zones. I’m becoming more open to decriminalizing personal usage across the board, but I still want to throw the book at people who might push on kids. We may need stronger discernment about real intent to distribute, but part of me wants to say well, if you weren’t breaking the law at all in the first place we wouldn’t have to worry about whether you were in or out of the school zone!
You asked how mandatory sentences could be applied in a racially discriminatory manner, and I answered.
The fact that you’re “perfectly fine with stiffer penalties in school zones” has nothing to do with the pronounced racial disparity in their impact. Your reaction to “people who might push on kids” is, frankly, a typical suburban white reaction. You are reacting to a stereotype that is NOT reality.
The reality is that MOST people who go to jail on school-zone charges were NOT selling to kids, and MANY of those people were doing their business inside their homes. The effect of the school-zone language is primarily to raise incarceration rates for urban blacks while doing NOTHING AT ALL to protect children.
You should know by now how much of a hoot I give about the happenstance of race. So maybe you need to be more careful if you live right next to a school. My reaction is for crying out loud don’t do it in the first place and we won’t have a problem. Yes, that includes any caucasian that might live right next to a school as well.
Then we’ll have no need for the criminal justice system, fairness be damned!
All people of all backgrounds are entitled to the equal protection of the laws and the presumption of innocence.
With mandatory minimums, the “equal protection” part isn’t happening in practice.
Sorry to break it to you, but you have just stated the attitude creates the HUGE racial disparity in our incarceration rates.
You might think you “don’t give a hoot” about race. What you are really saying is “I’m sending blacks to jail and I don’t care”. The plain fact is that very few Caucasians are subject to these draconian laws — by design — and so your attempt at even-handedness is a delusion.
You have just articulated the justification for a racist judicial system. It was racist when it was enacted, the facts about who gets incarcerated and who does not demonstrate that it has been racist during its tenure, and it is racist today.
With any luck, our judicial system will reverse this racist law — with our without the support of you and people who feel as you do.
Not caring about race is the EXACT OPPOSITE of a racist attitude! Do we count how many people of various eye or hair colors we send to jail? Or left-handers vs. right-handers? Do we care? I hope and assume not on all counts.
Sorry, but this assertion is simply incorrect no matter how often you repeat it.
As we’ve discussed before, I strongly suspect that the representation in the prison population of left-handers vs right-handers reflects the representation in the general population. If the general population had a 30/70 split between left and right handed people, and the prison population had a 70/30 split, then that fact alone is prima facie evidence of discrimination against left-handers.
The question is NOT whether or not you or anyone else “cares” about whether a person is left- or right-handed or what color their skin, eyes, and hair is. The question is, instead, whether we care about what our society does to those groups. We do not incarcerate huge numbers of left-handed people. We DO incarcerate huge numbers of black people.
The plain fact is that we incarcerate a MUCH larger share of our black population than our white population, and a MUCH larger share of our incarcerated population is black versus white.
Some of us care about that disparity. You, explicitly, do not. I find that attitude reprehensible. Sorry.
Here’s a hypothetical scenario that, I think, illustrates the fallacy you express.
Two nineteen year olds sit strapped to chairs, electrodes attached to their heads, wrists, and ankles. Each has been convicted of the same crime. One is white, one is black. The punishment for the crime is provided by a big red button in a separate control room.
“Ralph”, “George”, and “Herbert” sit in the control room, where the big red button is illuminated. All three know, because a sign on the wall says so, that pushing the button will provide a minor tingle to the white and kill the black.
Ralph is an outspoken member of the KKK and other white supremacist groups and says he will eagerly push the button if given the opportunity because he hates n****rs and says that to him the button-push is no different than the simple extermination of a rodent.
George is a loyal true-blue liberal Democrat who says he will push the button if asked because the law is the law and each prisoner has been convicted of a horrific crime. George honestly and sincerely states that he has no animosity towards either prisoner. He rejects any suggestion that the law itself is racist, because nowhere in the law does it explicitly state that blacks are to be treated differently from whites. He still, nevertheless, acknowledges that the sign on the wall says what will happen and he acknowledges that the black prisoner will die and the white prisoner will not.
Herbert flatly refuses to push the button because he is unwilling to participate in a process that kills blacks and does essentially nothing to whites for the same offense.
My view is that Ralph and George have each made an immoral choice. My view is that both Ralph and George are professing racist attitudes, even if they differ in their emotional responses to race. My view is that the black prisoner does not see one iota of difference between Ralph and George.
My view is that of the three, Herbert is making the correct choice.
You’re example is a lot more extreme and I am in no way arguing that the penalties should be different. I suspect very rarely given the exact same actors and circumstances the outcomes would be so obviously different. If they really are convicted of the exact same crime the penalty should of course be the same with maybe allowing for something like number of offenses.
…to being told their races because I find that irrelevant. If person A got one penalty and person B another, that’s already all I need to know to determine that this is an egregiously unjust situation.
You said upthread that you are “perfectly happy with tougher penalties in school zones”, even though that provision is a key factor in making these provisions racist in their application.
There are mandatory minimums for marijuana possession in school zones. Those penalties fall much more heavily on inner-city residents than on suburban residents. Inner-city residents are much more likely to be black.
The point is that, like it or not, the data is in and blacks are punished FAR MORE SEVERELY than whites for the same offenses.
You are arguing about individual leaves and refusing to admit the existing of the forest.
Leaving aside the other merits for now, if there are stiffer penalties for possessing a bit of pot closer to a school, then absolutely anyone of EITHER RACE who happens to live there would be subject to them, just as anyone of either race outside those boundaries would be subject to the lesser penalty. I’d be the first to cry foul if I thought it really did come down to race all other things (like proximity to a school) being equal, but I have no patience for looking just at statistical outcomes and assuming nefarious motives.
The issue isn’t the motive, it’s the outcome. People don’t choose their skin color, and young people don’t get to choose where they live. Even once adults, the spectrum of choices is much narrower for those who are poor.
The outcome of our policies is that black people are far more likely to be imprisoned than white people for both (a) identical crimes and (b) principally similar crimes. I suspect that the mood of the black men in prison is not lightened when they say hey! not every black man who committed my crime got a longer sentence than every white man. Just me and most guys who look like me. But, you know, not all. Statistical outcomes are for suckers. Because, you know, why consider statistics when we can take a narrow and naive interpretation!
…and one person’s fate has little to do with someone else’s. Very rarely are all circumstances and actors exactly the same from case to case. I fundamentally disagree as you may be able to tell on motive vs. outcome. If I were an appellate judge and a defense attorney started arguing that people of his client’s background get treated unfairly I would say, wait I want to hear about YOUR CLIENT only. Did HE get a fair trial? Does the particular judge or prosecutor in THIS CASE have a history of racial bias in the exercise of their respective discretions? If the attorney can in good faith answer no to the first and/or yes to the second I’m happy to listen, butI have no interest in considering the appropriate demographic balance in the prison population.
“Did he get a fair trial?” includes everything from jury selection to constitutional questions to procedural and due process issues.
You have just presented the argument offered by tobacco companies against the premise that cigarette smoking causes cancer — each smoker is different, each smoker’s habit is different, each brand is different, each cigarette of each brand is different.
You are arguing that even though the statistical evidence is compelling, is irrelevant — you insist that individual harm be proven, case by case.
This argument is empty and self-serving.
Finally, your last sentence is explicitly racist.
It’s the only fair and accurate way. There is overwhelming evidence using the scientific method that if you smoke you are much more likely to develop lung cancer or COPD, but that’s hard science. This isn’t. Yes, circumstances are likely to influence quality of legal representation and I’m all for trying to rectify that, but statistics say very little about how each case goes. If by my last statement you mean where I say I don’t care about demographic balance, I’d like you to teach me sometime how you twist that pretzel to make what I see as the epitome of an anti-racist statement into a racist one. Politifact would say Pants on Fire!
1. The statistical evidence of racial disparity in these sentencing laws is just as compelling as the statistical evidence that cigarettes cause cancer.
2. The tobacco companies claim that this is irrelevant. They claim, instead, that an individual smoker must prove that his or or her cancer was caused by the tobacco company being sued. This is exactly the same as your insistence on proving “individual harm”.
3. The purpose of the tobacco company strategy is to allow them to continue selling a deadly product. The purpose of your strategy is to perpetuate demonstrably racist laws.
I referred to these specific words: “I have no interest in considering the appropriate demographic balance in the prison population”.
By our current legal standards of racism, that statement is racist. No pretzels are required, and if Politifact said “Pants on Fire” it would be yet another example of their unreliability.
Your statement rejects that standard. The statistics are clear that incarcerations rates for blacks convicted of, for example, possessing an ounce of marijuana are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than for whites convicted of possessing the same amount of the same drug (usually because of school-zone violations).
That is a fact. That is prima facie evidence of racism. No “pretzel” is required to characterize your quoted statement rejecting that conclusion as “racist”.
…even in a school zone, but I’m running out of ways to say that I favor equal consequences among the races. A white person living in a school zone should get the same penalty as a black person living in a school zone, and likewise members of both races should get the same lesser penalty outside the school zone. This really isn’t hard to comprehend!
I fully understand what you’re saying. I think you’re egregiously incorrect.
The consequences of the school zone language is that black men serve far longer sentences for possessing the same ounce of pot that white men face. Remember that the threshold for “with intent to distribute” is much lower within a school zone.
The data is in, the consequences of these laws are known, the stark racial disparity in our prison population is widely documented, and your response continues to be “I have no interest”.
…I’d just rather fix the law based on what is best for everyone rather than wring our hands over race.
Various sites like this describe the differences.
Here are some excerpts (emphasis mine):
According to various histories, crack cocaine was introduced to US cities during the 1980s as a side-effect of the illegal contra war:
Crack cocaine was significantly less expensive than powdered cocaine, and quickly became the drug of choice in impoverished inner cities. Most of its victims were black, and the mainstream media quickly promoted hysteria about it:
Powdered cocaine is cut with some base (like powdered sugar), and so crack cocaine is more concentrated. This explains some of the differences in the threshold amounts that trigger various penalties.
The bottom line, though, is that crack cocaine was (and is) viewed as an “inner city” and therefore black drug. The disparities in sentencing reflect the racist fears of American society of the 1980s that demanded these laws.
I thought the CIA involvement was a conspiracy theory.
“I thought the CIA involvement was a conspiracy theory” Indeed. The Watergate break-in was just a burglary. You thought wrong, my friend.
You are deluding yourself about the racial content of these laws. You asked about their origin (rather than do the research yourself, I might add), I answered, and you dismiss important aspects as a “conspiracy theory”.
It appears to me that you are more interested in defending your racists attitudes towards inner-city blacks and drugs than in facing the truth.
…accuse me of having or defending racist attitudes!!! Maybe I was wrong, but it is what I had heard. Skin color is the biggest non-issue for me, as it should be for everyone 150 years after slavery and 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement. I do not hate or think others are lesser than me based on something so superficial as skin color. I am not in any way prejudiced against others on that account. Read my lips: I DON’T CARE!
The black kid in the ghetto on his way to jail for doing THE SAME illegal act as the white kid in suburbia also doesn’t care about your attitude.
In fact, what you FEEL about either is utterly irrelevant. What DOES matter, instead, is how the laws that YOU enact affect him.
You are promoting laws structured so that the same offense destroys the lives of black kids and is a minor embarrassment (if that) for white kids. Your apathy, combined with your explicit support for these laws with racist effects, adds to the racial disparity that is already destroying us.
You can yell and stamp your feet as much as you want. Your attitude is increasing racism in our society, and I most certainly will continue to say so.
I firmly believe in the equal protection of the law without qualification or reservation. Also, I believe I have asked questions about laws rather than promoting or supporting something specific with regards to for example the crack vs. powder distinction. If you want to narrow the gap between the races it sounds like we need MORE legislative requirement for sentencing and LESS judicial discretion. Obviously, any individual judge or prosecutor who has demonstrated a racially disparate pattern in their work ought to be removed, or at least appealed from.
I think this comment reveals a misunderstanding of racism.
Racism is not just about bias (“Skin color is the biggest non-issue for me”). Even to the extent it is about bias, white people consistently underestimate their bias which is a matter of reflexes, first impressions, and where the mind first jumps and never a matter of carefully considered opinion. Recall the recent experiments wherein similarly non-racist hiring managers were more likely to offer interviews to whites 18 months out of prison than to Blacks who’d never been to prison. It’s an illusion to imagine that the only kind of racism is the conscience pre-meditated kind, the easy to spot racism of the bigot and supremacist.
This comment also misses the remarkably different experience of Black people in this country. Whites are likely to know very few Black people — and those that they know are likely to be exceptional in some way. Segregation — which used to be enforced by businesses and violence — has been around a long time.
People do not just fall into your life, christopher, from the sky with randomly assigned colors like some giant celestial dice game. It’s unfair to imagine that you treat all people equally because the instincts of racism have been trained into all of us and we only overcome that if we’re lucky enough to pause and think: you cannot possibly treat all people equally. Your reflexes, the part of you not under conscious control, is racist. It is for almost all of us.
And it’s unfair to imagine that treating all people equally is fair when all people arrive in our lives unequal.
“You have to be carefully taught…” I believe as the South Pacific song says. I really do not think I have the unconscious biases that so many assume we all do. Why should I? I’m not biased against eye or hair color differences (and I don’t think occasionally chuckling at a blonde joke is serious enough to count), so why skin color? I don’t cross the street when someone of a different race approaches. I work with kids of different races everyday in my substitute teaching, plenty of whom are good and smart regardless of background. Just because the managers in the experiment might have demonstrated bias doesn’t mean we all do. Of course, race should be left out of information anyway so as not to risk such a thing. I very often decline to identify my race on various forms for precisely that reason. The only thing you may be right about above is that many people I know of any race are like me in other ways such as economic or academic background, but if anything that should IMPROVE my chances of seeing them as my brothers and sisters.
I am specifically responding to this statement: ” I really do not think I have the unconscious biases that so many assume we all do”. Sorry, christopher, but I’ve been reading your commentary here for years, and I have to tell you that based on that sample you are misleading yourself about your own biases.
EACH of us have these biases. That’s a FACT, whether you admit it or not. It’s a fact that is revealed by feedback from others. Perhaps you are familiar with an old paradigm called “Johari window“, regarding feedback.
They form a matrix, where one dimension has things “known to self” and “unknown to self” and the other “known to others” and unknown to others”. The reality is that others know things about us that we do not know about ourselves. It is the counterpart to the things many of us keep private — things known to us that are unknown to others.
Your assertion that you do not have the unconscious biases that literally every other person does have is an assertion about your refusal to admit the “known to others, unknown to self” cell in a Johari window for yourself.
You will not and cannot learn about your own biases until you invite others to share them with you. Your stance here is just the opposite, and so it is not surprising that you are so blind to them.
The way we learn about our biases is through feedback — inviting others to share what they know about us. When we share about ourselves, we move the boundary between “known to others” and “unknown to others” so that “known to others” is expanded. When we invite others to share what they know about us, the boundary between “known to self” and “unknown to self” is moved towards “known to self”. The result is that we learn more about ourselves. When we combine sharing about ourselves with listening to feedback from others, we reduce the “unknown” cell.
EACH of us has these biases, it is universal. I suspect that by digging around a bit, you could probably find resources that will help you measure them (questionnaires, interviews, etc). They really are there, because they really are universal.
It seems to me that the question is whether or not you are willing to admit your biases to yourself, not whether or not they exist.
I am in no way claiming that I am unique or special in this regard. Plenty of people I know don’t demonstrate biases either. I also never said I don’t have any biases whatsoever, just not racial ones. Anything that you have pointed out as bias I have rejected in your analysis. It makes no sense to have bias unless your experience or learning has primed you for it and mine have not. What I HAVE learned much to my dismay is how prevalent such biases still are in 2016. We ALL need to get to a point where none of this matters. I have chosen the color-blind rather than color-conscious path to accomplish this goal because I believe only by ignoring it can we truly see skin color as no more significant than eye color or hair color. However, I emphatically reject any notion that I am responsible for or have to accommodate the less than perfect views of others. All we can do is treat all people as our brothers and sisters, and encourage the law and other individuals to do likewise. If you’ve been reading my commentary over the years you will also know that few things work me up faster or more intensely than demonstrations of racial animus or superiority.
You still don’t accept that:
1. Systemic racism has nothing to do with individual attitude and is real. It is, and most Democrats argue should be, illegal.
2. Your claim that you harbor no UNCONSCIOUS biases is unique and special, no matter how emphatically you repeat it. The overwhelming evidence is that EVERY person has these unconscious biases.
I don’t expect this exchange to end any differently from any of our prior ones on the same topic. That does not change the reality of how your unconscious biases affect your political views.
If you were running for public office, your attitude towards these matters would make it impossible for me to support you. While of course you must make your own choices, I’m just giving you feedback about how those choices influence my response to you.
…though I’m reminded that once upon a time in a comment you called yourself racist and sexist. You clearly aren’t either of those by any reasonable definition so I will continue to take your generous use of such terms with a huge grain of salt, largely because such use IMO dilutes the power those words should have to name truly egregious motives, comments, or actions.
…that you can’t support someone who takes very literally the concept of equal protection and wants to see Dr. King’s dream of judging by content of character come sooner rather than later.
Thumbs-up for the school zone fact. I never really thought about that.
From the recent Harper’s
Actually many thought it was a spectacularly bad idea at the time and an act of political cowardice.
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but I’m not wiling to give a pass to the so-called leaders who enacted and signed these ruinous measures into law. (And 3 strikes was not so very long ago either.)
Should have said that it seemed like a good idea to some.
supported the war on drugs.
Shirley Chisolm voted for Nixon to be tougher on drugs. Charles Rangle founded the black cong caucus and supported harsh drug laws. (It was a closed door meeting with Nixon, but he was obsessed with taping everything).
In 1970 Ebony magazine wrote “Blacks declare war on drugs” In 1968 Rev Dempsey wanted armed gangs of Black vigilantes to patrol NY streets to disrupt the drug deals.
I don’t know how to “link” things on here, but google “Blacks support Rockefeller tough drug laws” and you’ll see tough punishment wasn”t just something “Whitey” wanted to impose on the Blacks. Some Black leaders called for the death penalty for drug dealers.
I recently watched an old Firing Line that had WFB on the legalization side and Rangel on the drug wars side. Amusing in retrospect. WFB pointed out the crack disparity and Rangel said he welcomed it since it helped clean the neighborhood up.
We also know that drug addition is a chronic, relapsing brain disease for which incarceration is an inappropriate and ineffective remedy.
When I read the recommendations it says treatment should be given for first and second time offenders. But it also says it is expected that people will relapse into using drugs. So chances are there are going to be some “third time” offenders. Does incarceration suddenly go back to being an appropriate and effective remedy?
I have to say, I think this is an easy case, but an easy case for the Commonwealth, not for Laltaprasad. The obvious solution is legislative. The Superior Court judge did not make her decision on constitutional grounds, and from the briefs it appears that Laltaprasad failed to raise any constitutional arguments below.
Hi TedF!
I think you’re right on the law — defendant failed properly to raise constitutional issues before the trial judge, obvious solution is legislative, etc.
But I am wondering about the equities, so to speak. Given that Chief Justice Gants has spoken out forcefully for eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, and (2) that mandatory minimums have been in force for 36 years, which has permitted the development of a considerable social science record about them, and (3) that, as far as I know, the SJC has not granted the motion to strike that the D.A.’s office filed, I’m wondering whether things might play out differently.
HP, you could be right. It’s good to be the SJC!
is not that incarceration is never appropriate, but that judges ought to have some role to play in determining when.
(And also where — a conviction resulting in incarceration in a house of correction for two years is a misdemeanor, whereas a conviction resulting in incarceration in state prison for the same time is a felony, which has far more significant collateral consequences.)
If drug addiction is a chronic medical condition shouldn’t incarceration be limited to at worst a psych hospital?