On Monday, April 20, hundreds of Ecumenical Advocacy Days participants from around the country will meet with the offices of their Senators and Representatives to address these justice issues, after a weekend of education and training on the issues of mass incarceration and systems of exploitation.
We call on Congress to reform federal criminal justice and
immigrant detention policies toward the goal of ending unfair, unnecessary,
costly and racially biased mass incarceration:
·
Adopt criminal justice and sentencing reform policies that
incorporate an end to mandatory minimum sentencing;
·
Eliminate the detention bed quota for immigrant detention.
End Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
We urge Congress to support
federal criminal justice reform legislation that would:
- Allow judges the discretion to fully consider the circumstances of individual cases to arrive at the most appropriate sentencing decision.
- Strike or reduce mandatory minimum sentences.
- Shrink the size of the federal prison system, particularly among people convicted of nonviolent and low-level offenses.
- Eliminate racial disparity and racial bias in sentencing.
- Prioritize alternatives to incarceration for individuals who pose little threat to public safety, and ensure accountability without the use of excessive punishment.
- Overall, federal sentences are excessive given the level of culpability for the average federal prisoner. Half of the federal prison population was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison and 25% was sentenced to between 5 and 10 years in prison. Twenty-six percent of prisoners are serving sentences for violent offenses and about half are serving sentences for drug offenses. U.S. Sentencing Commission research indicates that nearly one-third of federal prisoners have little or no criminal history.
- Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses have created significant racial disparities within the federal prison system. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has also found that Black and Hispanic defendants constitute the majority of people subject to mandatory minimum sentences and existing opportunities for relief from them are less often available to African American defendants. In 2011, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found black defendants were more likely to receive mandatory minimum penalties, in 60.6% of drug cases carrying such a penalty. Hispanic defendants were sentenced to a mandatory minimum in 41% of such cases and whites in 36.3%.
- Excessive sentencing practices, exacerbated by mandatory minimums, created an overcrowding crisis within the federal Bureau of Prisons. During fiscal year 2013, the federal prison system was 36% over its rated capacity. For high and medium security male facilities, capacity exceeded 50% and 45%, respectively. This overcrowding creates a dangerous environment for prisoners and staff because of an increase in misconduct caused by the strain of the deteriorating prison conditions. Prisoners now face triple or quadruple bunking in cells and many recreational areas have transitioned into dormitory space.
- Over three decades of unchecked growth in the federal prison population has burdened the federal criminal justice system and produced increasing costs that are unsustainable. In 1980 the federal prison population was approximately 25,000 and cost about $330 million. By fiscal year 2014 the population had grown to 216,000 people and received an appropriation from Congress of $6.874 billion. The per capita cost of incarcerating an individual in the federal system is $29,000 annually.
- At a time of significant government belt tightening the high cost of prison limits allocations for other important justice programs, like services for victims, crime prevention, and re-entry programs. The Bureau of Prisons consumes over 25% of the Department of Justice’s budget and this proportion will continue to grow if significant reforms designed to curtail growth and reduce the prison population are not enacted.
- Passage of the Smarter Sentencing Act would advance several sentencing reform priorities of the faith community. The legislation’s provisions would limit the long mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, create an immediate reduction in the federal prison population due to the retroactive application of sentencing reforms passed under the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010 for crack cocaine offenses, and expand judicial discretion in cases involving the lowest level drug offenses.
- Passage of the Justice Safety Valve Act comes closest to realizing the sentencing goals of the faith community. The legislation would restore judicial discretion in all federal criminal cases by allowing the broadest departure from mandatory minimum sentences.
We support legislation like the Smarter
Sentencing Act of 2015 (S. 502/H.R. 920), sponsored by Senators Mike
Lee (R-UT) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Representatives Raúl Labrador (R-ID)
and Robert (Bobby) Scott (D-VA), and the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2015 (S.
353/H.R. 706), sponsored by Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Patrick Leahy
(R-VT) and Representatives Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Bobby Scott (D-VA), as
intermediate legislative approaches to advancing these recommendations.
Our Faith Conviction
As people of faith and conscience, we are deeply concerned
for the many millions of men, women and children arrested, sentenced,
incarcerated and returned home from incarceration throughout this country. The federal criminal justice system should
lead the nation in ensuring proportional and equitable accountability for our
brothers and sisters entangled within the criminal justice system.
Unfortunately, the federal justice system is far from a national model. Since
1980, the size of the federal prison population has increased nearly 800%.
Approximately 210,000 people are confined in federal prisons; 12% are in
facilities managed by for-profit corporations. Many federal prisons are
dangerously overcrowded and rehabilitative programming and treatment
opportunities are lacking.
Mandatory minimum penalties -- sentences prescribed by
Congress -- have substantially contributed to the increase in the federal
prison population over the last 30 years and must be addressed to stop the
crisis. We concur with the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission’s 2011 report
on mandatory minimum penalties that states, “certain mandatory minimum
provisions apply too broadly, are set too high, or both, to warrant the
prescribed minimum penalty… This has led to inconsistencies in application of
certain mandatory minimum penalties….”
Eliminate the Immigrant Detention
Bed Quota
We urge Congress to eliminate the detention
bed quota for Fiscal Year 2016.
In the
House, Congressmen Deutch (D-FL) & Foster (D-IL) will introduce an
amendment to strike the quota language in the appropriations bill. We ask
you to:
· Vote in favor of this amendment.
· Contact other offices to gain support for the
elimination of the quota.
·
Express your
opposition to the bed quote
in public statements.
The United States has the largest immigration
detention infrastructure in the world. The expansion of this system in recent
years is partly due to the immigration detention bed quota, a policy passed by
Congress under which 34,000 immigrants are held in ICE detention at any given
time. This policy is unprecedented; no other law enforcement agency operates on
a quota system.
What
is the bed quota?
· Enacted by Congress: Congressional appropriations
language in ICE’s budget states “[t]hat funding made available under this
heading shall maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds.”
·
Implemented as a
quota: ICE interprets this language as a quota
requiring the agency to lock-up an average of 34,000 people in immigration detention at any
given time.
What
is the bed quota’s impact?
· Immigrants are held in facilities in which
innumerable human rights abuses and dozens of deaths have occurred. Immigrants are
often held with no access to outdoor space, served rotten food, and subjected
to wholly inadequate medical and mental health care. Most immigrants are
held in facilities hundreds of miles from their families and without access to
counsel.
· The quota feeds into a larger system
characterized by mass deportation and lack of due process. It incentivizes targeting immigrants for
deportation in order to fill jail cells.
· It puts a price tag on immigrant lives. The policy leads
Congress and ICE to treat immigrants as numbers to fill a quota, not as real
people with children and loved ones who depend on them.
· It costs ICE over
$2 billion every year. Money
appropriated for the bed quota helps line the pockets of for-profit prison
corporations that run over half of all immigration jail beds. The two top
private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO
Group, have a combined annual revenue of over $3 billion.
Our Faith Conviction
As people of faith we support
alternatives to immigrant detention, which runs contrary to our values of basic
dignity, due process, and human rights. Immigrants are often held with no
access to outdoor space, served rotten food, and subjected to wholly inadequate
medical and mental health care. Detained
families are seeking protection from sexual assault, trafficking, and violence.
The bed quota is a particularly egregious element of the immigrant detention
system.
Detention operates on a quota system that
keeps 34,000 immigrants imprisoned each day.
· Congress has directed ICE to maintain a daily
quota of 34,000 detention beds and has made ICE’s funding contingent on doing
so.
· The requirement to fill the quota forces ICE
to find immigrants to detain and to continue operating facilities with subpar
conditions and track records of abuse.
· No other law enforcement agency is forced to
operate on a quota system.
Detention is expensive – there
is a human cost to our communities and a monetary cost to taxpayers.
· The administration’s rampant detention and
deportation policies mean that the families and communities of nearly half a
million people are torn apart each year.
· The most recent
budget request for ICE’s Custody Operations is just over $2 billion. During a
time of fiscal crisis, it is unacceptable to be spending billions of taxpayer
dollars to needlessly detain immigrants.
This is a complete waste of
resources when other proven and effective methods—including parole, release
under supervision, and bond—cost taxpayers far less than detention.
Private prison corporations lobby for
policies like the bed quota which keep immigrants in detention.
· Nearly 60% of detention beds are in
facilities run by private prison corporations, which rake in profits from the
incarceration of immigrants.
