Gaining perspective

I am back in the Buckeye state and so very grateful to Congresswoman Maxine Waters and her wonderful staff for allowing me the opportunity to participate in today’s panel discussion on federal sentencing at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 34th Annual Legislative Conference in Washington DC (background here).

As I anticipated, I learned a tremendous amount from my fellow panelists and also from the audience on a range of critical issues. Much of the discussion focused on federal mandatory minimum sentencing — and included the exciting news that Congresswoman Waters will soon introduce a bill proposing to eliminate certain mandatory penalties in some non-violent drug cases. But the discussion also canvassed other federal and state sentencing issues. For example, I was disconcerted to hear about New Jersey’s severe racial disparities in its prison population from New Jersey’s Attorney General Peter C. Harvey, but I was encouraged to hear that New Jersey has a new commission now reviewing the state’s sentencing policies and practices. (Background on New Jersey state sentencing realities can be found here, and details about the new New Jersey commission and its challenges are here and here.)

Though I could go on at length about the particular insights shared by other panelists — so many important points were made by The Honorable Ruben Castillo, The Honorable Terry Hatter, Julie Stewart, and Nkechi Taifa — the collective insight I took away from the event concerned how different the sentencing world and the possibility for meaningful reform looks depending upon one’s experiences and perspective.

Sadly, I got the feeling that perhpas naive optimism fuels my own belief that Blakely has created an historic moment for historic rethinking of modern sentencing policies and practices. Both the substance and tone of many comments from those working in DC left me with an impression that meaningful sentencing reform seems much more possible when considered from the ivory tower than from inside the Beltway.