Ending Minimum Drug Sentences

“Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for no truly good law enforcement reason. We cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation.” That’s what Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech in which he called for an end to some mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders which makes a lot of sense because we are filling our prisons with people who probably shouldn’t be there, certainly not for as long as many of them are, and besides, many of these laws are enforced unfairly since a white person in a nice neighborhood can walk down the street with a backpack of weed barely visible through fresh plumes of smoke without suffering any consequences (or so I’m told) while people in poor neighborhoods are caught in a hopeless cycle of incarceration for which society…