Big Pothole In Joe’s Pot Pardon

Say it ain’t so, Jason: “Biden’s Marijuana Pardon Won’t Release a Single Inmate” as “Incarceration rates are driven by violent not drug crime … Democrats don’t like that story” or GOP’s j’accuse they coddle criminals …

As WSJ columnist Jason Riley notes, “Democrats have their own narrative to push, which is that the war on drugs has led to the mass incarceration of people who are disproportionately black and is therefore racist.” The problems with that spiel, says Riley, is that civil-rights activists & pols like Barack Obama “often conveniently omit the role that black community leaders & the black press [as well as black congressmen] played a half-century ago in getting tougher drug laws passed.” As a result, “whatever you think of the wisdom of this approach in hindsight, the claim that the initial war on drugs & subsequent escalations were motivated by racial animus toward blacks is nonsense.” Meanwhile, he adds, the reality if inconvenient truth based on DOJ stats is that as a percentage of our incarcerated population, those possessing small amounts of marijuana, “barely register.”

Mr. Riley cites Yale Law Prof & ex-DC Public Defender James Forman in his book “Locking Up Our Own” who wrote, “for every ten thousand people behind bars in America today, only six are there because of marijuana possession,” the rest being convicted of serious trafficking and/or violent crimes against people and/or property. Another criminal law prof at Fordham, John Pfaff, agrees in his book, “Locked In”: The racial disparities in prison populations would barely budge if all the people serving time for [minor] drug crimes were immediately released.” Can Joe handle the truth?

Davd Soul