channel orange.

a moment of clarity.


words. 

 "...the drug war is entrenched in decades of prison buildup. Between 1980 and 2010, state incarceration rates for drug crimes multiplied tenfold, while the federal drug prisoner population ballooned by a factor of 20. Every year, taxpayers shell out $51 billion for drug war spending. Meanwhile, 2.2 million people — or a quarter of the world's prisoners — crowd a system that exacts its harshest toll on the most vulnerable. Racism undermines the justice process from initial stop to sentence, and 60 percent of those incarcerated are people of color. Rates of illiteracy, addiction, and mental illness are disproportionately high.

 ...By linking punishment to drug weight, mandatory minimums often distort culpability; consider that a hired hand unloading contraband from the back of a truck may handle more drugs than the cartel leader who arranged the shipment. Forty percent of drug defendants in the federal system were couriers or street dealers, and like Tyler, most weren't violent: of the 25,000 drug offenders taken into custody last year, 85 percent did not have a weapon associated with their case.

... it's impossible to wrap your mind around the disproportionate sentences you see in here. Structural racism creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, where its consequences become its justifications..."

ROLLING STONE: The Nation's Shame: The Injustice of Mandatory Minimums