With considerable help from the corporate media, the Obama administration is claiming much of the credit for the pending release of about 6,000
federal prison inmates, most of them convicted under the now-defunct
statute that mandated 100-to-1 penalties for possession and sale of
crack cocaine, versus the powdered kind preferred by whites. In reality,
Obama’s Justice Department has fought since 2011 to prevent most of
these same, overwhelmingly Black inmates from being set free under the
terms of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. Attorney General Eric Holder
successfully argued against retroactive application
of the new law, thus condemning the roughly 6,000 federal prisoners
convicted under the old statute to serve out their draconian sentences,
or to apply for individual review. Ever since, the Justice Department
has given thumbs-up or thumbs-down to a steady stream of inmates seeking
to prove their individual qualifications for release.
It is, therefore, a revision of history – a lie! – to describe the
large, one-time, upcoming prisoner release, scheduled to take place
between October 30 and November 2, as an Obama administration
“initiative.” The administration’s consistent purpose has been to resist
the growing, bipartisan consensus to dramatically reduce prison
numbers.
-- Glen Ford, "Obama's Justice: Holder Fought Prisoner Release, Lynch Backtracks on Killer Cops" (Black Agenda Report).
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