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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rudolph Norris is the first to admit that he was caught up in the crack epidemic of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
“I was far from an angel,” Norris said. “It cost me 20 some years of my life.”
But it wasn’t an addiction to drugs that landed him behind bars. In 1992, Norris was sentenced to 30 years in prison for possessing and selling more than an ounce of crack cocaine.
“You don't have to be addicted to drugs. You can be addicted to a lifestyle,” Norris said. “It’s just as bad as a person using [drugs].”
Norris is one of tens of thousands of prisoners put away during a tough-on-crime era defined by harsh mandatory sentencing guidelines that focused disproportionately on low-level drug offenses.
“Every night on TV, there was information about people being shot on street corners and babies being born addicted to crack,” said Julie Stewart, the director of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “There was this very heightened half-myth, half-truth about drugs that led to the current round of mandatory minimums.”
Stewart says politicians reacted by rushing to pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which established the mandatory minimums for drug offenses used by courts today.
The United States is home to just 5 percent of the world’s population, but it accounts for more than 20 percent of the global prison population.
Today, in a rare display of bipartisan cooperation, politicians from both parties are working to address overcrowded prisons, with a focus on reversing some of the mandatory minimums that have been in place since the 1980s.
But critics say that could send the wrong message.
“Over the last 20 or 25 years – when we have taken more people off the street and incarcerated them for longer terms – crime has decreased, and it’s decreased significantly,” said Bill Otis, a former federal prosecutor.
But the reform effort is already underway. Because of a 2014 amendment to sentencing guidelines, which reduced penalties for some drug offenses some 46,000 prisoners could now be eligible for sentence reductions. In the past week alone, more than 6,000 federal prisoners were released because of retroactive sentence reductions.
Otis says that releasing ex-convicts back onto the streets will lead to a spike in crime. But the 17 states that have reduced prison populations in recent years have also seen a drop in crime, according to a recent ACLU study.
As Congress considers going further on criminal justice reform, President Barack Obama has taken action on his own. Last summer, the president granted early release to 22 federal prisoners who were jailed for lengthy terms on low-level drug charges. One of them was Norris, who had waited more than two decades for a second chance.
“When the [prison official] stepped in and said, ‘Well, I just want you to know that your pardon has been granted,’ I mean, I was lost for words,” Norris said. “He said, ‘How do you feel?’ And I jumped up and I was crying.”
Since his release in August, Norris has already obtained his driver’s license and found temporary work printing T-shirt designs at a factory in Maryland. He’s still living in his brother’s basement, but he has his sights set on a place of his own.
“I still believe people should have a second chance,” Norris said between shifts at his new job. “That's the one thing I refuse to do is wear that label as a convict. I'm a person that just made a bad decision, and I paid a price for it.”
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New sentencing guidelines will start sending 6,000 inmates home, but for some that freedom is 'like a slap in the face'
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