PJP ADDRESSES MINIMUM SENTENCING

The Princeton Justice Project (PJP) held its second lecture in a
series titled "An Unjust Sentence?" Saturday to highlight the negative
aspects of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes.

About 30 people, including six students and some New Jersey residents,
attended the 10 a.m. lecture.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, and
Angelyn Frazer of Families Against Mandatory Minimums were the guest
speakers.

Krista Brune '06, one of the coordinators of the lecture series by the
Prison Reform Group of PJP, said the lecture was "one of the most
important in our series."

"[Mandatory minimum sentencing laws are] one of the issues that, as
community members, it is easier to get involved in and change," she
said.

Nadelmann said that while the United States includes five percent of
the world's population, it houses more than 25 percent of the world's
prison population.

He also focused on the increase in drug-related incarcerations, noting
that in 1980, 10 percent of prisoners were incarcerated for
drug-related charges. Today the figure is more than 30 percent.

"Do not punish people for what they put in their bodies if it doesn't
harm anyone else," Nadelmann said. "The reason we attack some drugs
but not others isn't because the health risks are that different but
because the people who use them are different."

He attacked "racism against druggies" and said "the desire to alter
consciousness is innate to human consciousness."

The speakers also addressed the U.S. government's "war on drugs,"
which Nadelmann described as "a cancer in society."

"People are dying and innocents get locked up. It's like a war," he
said.

Bumper stickers with the slogan "Drug abuse is bad, the war on drugs
is worse" were available outside the lecture room.

Frazer played video footage from a CBS News special on mandatory
minimum sentences in which a young female driver was sentenced to life
in prison for carrying more than 650 grams of heroin, placed in the
car by her boyfriend without her knowledge.

"This [woman's sentence] is more than rapists get," Frazer
said.

The mandatory minimum, under which the woman was sentenced, was
enacted to "catch the big fish," Frazer explained. Eighty-five percent
of those in jail sentenced under mandatory minimum laws have no
previous criminal record, she said.

Frazer and Nadelmann both advocated treatment over incarceration and
attacked the use of prisoners for labor.

"When Victoria's Secret uses prison labor, it's like slavery," Frazer
said.

Joy Holloway, who came to film the lecture for the Jersey Cable Access
show "Dilated Pupils," criticized the criminal justice system.

"The whole [U.S.] system is corrupt. I think that it's a way for
politicians to make money and get votes," she said.

PJP was started in 2001 with the help of Bill Potter '68, a former
public advocate in New Jersey and a preceptor at the University.

Potter said PJP is "Princeton in the Nation's Service, now."