Take Action! Support the JUDGES Act What's At Stake! Thanks in part to draconian mandatory minimum sentencing and insufficiently flexible federal sentencing guidelines, our nation's prisons and jails hold more than half a million nonviolent drug offenders -- more than the total number of prisoners in the entire European Union for all criminal offenses combined, even though the EU has more people than the United States. Earlier this year, Congress passed legislation known as the Feeney Amendment (now Sec. 401 of the PROTECT Act) that will strip even more discretion from judges by requiring the US Sentencing Commission to enact changes to the federal sentencing guidelines reducing the frequency of "downward departures," affecting sentencing across the board including for drug offenses. Rep. Feeney has acknowledged that he got the legislation directly from the US Dept. of Justice, and Attorney General John Ashcroft has already gone on the offensive with the amendment, ordering prosecutors to challenge downward departures in virtually all cases. A measure introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), the JUDGES Act (S. 1086 and H.R. 2213), would repeal Sec. 401 and other unjust provisions of the PROTECT Act, and a major national lobbying campaign is underway to get it passed when Congress returns in September. Mandatory minimum sentencing and mass incarceration are historic human tragedies that cry out for redress. Repealing Sec. 401 of the PROTECT Act would send a signal that the tide is turning against unjust drug sentencing. So please take action today! Visit http://www.famm.org for further information on this issue and legislation. Click on the link to Take Action! http://stopthedrugwar.org/justice/
"our nation's prisons and jails hold more than half a million nonviolent drug offenders -- more than the total number of prisoners in the entire European Union for all criminal offenses combined" no way!