Law Commons^™

Sentencing, Drugs, And Prisons: A Lesson From Ohio, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Prison overcrowding has become a familiar story. Current data shows that more than 1 in 100 adults in America—over 2 million people—are incarcerated, earning the United States the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that state and federal prisons are reaching and exceeding capacity. Nor should it be a shock that drug offenders take up many of the beds in those overcapacity prisons. Relative to other crimes, drug sentencing in the United States has been increasingly harsh since the 1970s, and the prison population is feeling the effects …

Blind Injustice: The Supreme Court, Implicit Racial Bias, And The Racial Disparity In The Criminal Justice System, Tyler Rose Clemons

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This statement by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2007 is alluring in both its grammatical symmetry and its logical simplicity. Yet it encapsulates the naiveté of the view of racial discrimination currently held by the majority of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice Roberts’s assertion contains the implied assumption that the only racial discrimination that exists—or at least the only kind that matters under the Constitution—is explicit and susceptible to conscious control. Decades of …

Forget Sentencing Equality: Moving From The “Cracked” Cocaine Debate Toward Particular Purpose Sentencing, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

While a racial equality-themed discourse has traditionally fueled the crack-versus-powder cocaine sentencing debate, this Article asserts that seeking equality in sentencing outcomes is the wrong goal. This Article argues that reformers seeking racial equality in sentencing are misguided in using the cocaine sentencing standards as a benchmark of fairness, because the current cocaine sentencing standards do not effectively serve the purposes of punishment. Rather than focusing on equality, this Article advocates implementing Particular Purpose Sentencing, which involves developing a framework for drug offenses to be analyzed individually and matched with punishments that purposefully address the concerns associated with the particular …