OVERHAULING NEW JERSEY'S SENTENCING LAWS

For a group of 12 adults meeting with Families Against Mandatory Minimums, loosening the New Jersey prison system's hold on the black and Hispanic communities was the most important way they could spend a recent Saturday.

The work of this group is so urgent that one woman says her boyfriend in prison will just have to understand why she can't visit him this one Saturday.  So much more is at stake - his freedom and the freedom of tens of thousands of others caught up in the prison system.

Another woman is worried about her 25-year-old son, newly jailed in East Jersey State Prison in Rahway for a drug-related offense.  After he serves a long sentence, a hopeless situation could send him back, she fears.  Freedom could be disastrous for him: He has no driver's license, no job prospects, no place to live.  She said many people will look at him as an employment risk even though he has been to college.  And there's another problem, she said.  Although he's in prison, his college loans are accruing penalties and interest, so he'll also be faced with massive bills.

Getting Trenton to reform mandatory sentencing laws is one way to put an end to the stringent penalties that were adopted in the 1980s to stop the proliferation of drug-related crimes.  The overly punitive drug laws - five years for a minuscule five grams of crack, 10 years for two ounces, and up to life in prison for repeat offenders - have not been very effective against the high-level drug dealers.  But the laws sure have caught people who would have been better off with drug treatment, job training, education, and other needs not addressed in prison.

In a little meeting room in a hotel next to Newark Liberty International Airport, the group spent the morning and afternoon trying to chip away at problems caused in the community by massive incarceration of both men and women.

"It's not a coincidence that 66 percent of the prison population is African-American," said Gale Muhammad, an organizer on the FAMM staff in New Jersey.  "The weakest of the black families have fallen into the criminal justice system and been captured in this big net.  We're not trying to eliminate prisons in New Jersey, but to put discretion back in the judges' hands."

FAMM, a national organization started 13 years ago to address the excessive penalties required by mandatory sentencing laws, has 1,500 members in New Jersey.  Several more information workshops scheduled around the state in May could add more.

Family involvement is an important first step in recognizing incarceration as a community problem, not just an issue for the criminal justice establishment.  FAMM's approach, educating inmates' families about the nuts and bolts of working with elected officials, is ultimately aimed at rewriting the sentencing laws to avoid the waste of so much human potential in New Jersey prisons.

Some of the decline in the state's prison population over the past few years comes from diverting non-violent drug offenders to drug courts.  In New Jersey, 36 percent of inmates are incarcerated on drug charges, which is, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, the highest proportion of drug offenders in any state.

FAMM is invaluable because it offers expertise to its 35 chapters nationwide to help people work together to change sentencing laws.  New Jersey's penalty laws are considered among the harshest.

While many activists in criminal justice reform are pinning their hopes to sentencing reform, the issues that need to be addressed include after incarceration - rehabilitation, reconciliation with families, continued substance-abuse counseling and psychological help.  Equally important are restoring the right to vote and building skills to make ex-offenders employable.

This is a good time to develop strategies for reform.  With the recent creation of a state commission to review crime and punishment in New Jersey, the tide is definitely turning.  At a meeting of the New Jersey chapter of the American Correctional Association earlier this month, state Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown talked about the impact of so much jailing on the African-American and Latino communities - which he sees directly when he visits schools and asks kids about the adults in their lives who are incarcerated.

"It's chilling when so many kids raise their hands," said Brown, who holds degrees in psychology in addition to his law degree.

And he worries about the message that such imprisonment sends: "[Prison] must be OK if Mommy and Daddy are there."