FAMM has resources and contacts to assist the media with reporting on mandatory minimum sentences and their effects on the country. Media inquiries should be directed to media@famm.org.
(Chicago Sun Times/Associated Press – Julie Stewart quoted) — Attorney General Eric Holder announced a major shift Monday in federal sentencing policies, targeting long mandatory terms that he said have flooded the nation’s prisons with low-level drug offenders and diverted crime-fighting dollars that could be far better spent. Read more…
(Washington Post – quotes Julie Stewart) — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s proposed prison reforms drew praise from criminal justice experts Monday, but some critics said the proposals do not go far enough to begin overhauling a costly and broken law enforcement system. In an effort to reduce the population of the nation’s overflowing… Read more »
(Kansas City Star) — Attorney General Eric Holder announced a series of prison sentencing revisions Monday, but the really big action must take place on Capitol Hill and in individual states. Calling widespread incarceration “both ineffective and unsustainable,” Holder announced that he’d direct federal prosecutors to avoid charging low-level, nonviolent drug defendants with crimes that… Read more »
(PBS News Hour) — Nearly half of the nation’s prisoners are serving time for drug related crimes. Judy Woodruff gets debate from Mary Price of Families Against Mandatory Minimums and William Otis of Georgetown Law School on Attorney General Eric Holder’s push to scale back mandatory minimum sentences for low-level, non-violent drug offenders. Read more…
(Politico – Julie Stewart interviewed) — If the Obama administration succeeds in its new drive to rein in mandatory minimum prison sentences, it will be a sign Democrats have carried out a kind of political exorcism — finally putting to rest any lingering anxiety over the “soft on crime” label that terrorized the party back in… Read more »
WASHINGTON, D.C. – FAMM president Julie Stewart today welcomed the U.S. Justice Department’s proposals for reforming federal criminal sentencing laws and prosecutorial charging practices. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Department’s proposed reforms in a speech to the American Bar Association today in San Francisco. “For the past 40 years, the Department of Justice, under… Read more »
(SFGate, Debra Saunders column – Julie Stewart interviewed) — It was big news Monday when Attorney General Eric Holder told the American Bar Association in San Francisco, “Certain low-level nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences.” It… Read more »
