NorthJersey.com
Advocates for criminal justice reform are cheering a new bill up for approval in the state Assembly that would eliminate mandatory minimum prison sentences for a bevy of crimes, from public corruption to drug possession to shoplifting.
The bill, S-3456, which received swift approval from the state Senate on Monday with no discussion and advanced at an Assembly committee meeting Wednesday, remains controversial, with one Republican lawmaker chiding his colleagues for writing themselves a “get-out-of-jail-free card.”
The effort in New Jersey to ax mandatory minimum prison sentences is part of a nationwide push to revisit anti-crime legislation from the 1980s and ‘90s that reformers blame for creating a dramatic racial disparity among inmates. New Jersey’s disparity is among the worst in the nation, experts say.
Bill ending mandatory minimums now covers all nonviolent crimes
TRENTON A new version of stalled legislation that would end mandatory minimum sentences now applies to all nonviolent offenses – including official misconduct, which had held up the previous version of the plan.
The state Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission had recommended lifting mandatory minimum sentences for many crimes, though not public corruption often charged as official misconduct. When that got added to the last bill, some balked – in part because bill sponsor Sen. Nicholas Sacco, D-Hudson, has a personal connection to someone facing that charge.
Gov. Phil Murphy opposed that amendment but has pushed for the broader bill, which in its latest incarnation is no longer sponsored by Sacco.
Credit: (Pool photo: Ed Murray/NJ Advance Media)
Gov. Phil Murphy, seen here delivering State of the State address, has balked at move to extend relief to those convicted of official misconduct.
The New Jersey Senate went back to square one Tuesday in an effort to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for all nonviolent crimes, most importantly drug offenses, 15 months after a state commission recommended the change.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-0 and with little fanfare to advance S-3456, amid calls by activists for lawmakers to end mandatory minimum sentences. The New Jersey Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission in its November 2019 report indicated that such requirements that a person serve a minimum amount of time before parole eligibility are responsible for much of the disparity at the state’s prisons, where the incarceration rate for Blacks is 12 times higher than for whites.
Sweeney and Sacco use Black lives as political pawns | Editorial
Updated Dec 13, 2020;
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Politicians in New Jersey are quick to declare that Black Lives Matter. But the fact that hundreds of people during this pandemic are behind bars based on stupid laws, and legislators might simply end their session this year and not fix them, says otherwise.
This is what racism looks like today – it’s not firehoses. It’s this kind of foolery.
New Jersey’s prisons have the worst racial disparity in the nation, largely because we slap people with long sentences for nonviolent crimes, with no chance of early release. Consider the harsher penalties for those accused of selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school or 500 feet of public housing – that’s pretty much anywhere in a city like Newark.