Bakari Kitwana
Bakari Kitwana is the author of The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture and co-founder of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention.

The Democratic Party should call for an end to draconian mandatory minimum sentencing for those convicted of nonviolent drug crimes, and establish a reasonable and fair sentencing system that doesn't rob citizens of decades of their lives.

The war on drugs has failed to end illegal drug sales or consumption, while mandatory sentencing has played a primary role in the rise of US incarceration in the past thirty years, from 330,000 to more than 2 million--nearly one-fourth of whom are drug offenders.

Paramilitary policing as part of the war on drugs is concentrated in poor communities and results in high arrest rates, racial profiling and police brutality, as well as the devastation of thousands of families and neighborhoods.

Mandatory minimums disproportionately affect African-Americans and other people of color (African-Americans represent 45 percent of the US prison population). They are also unfair: A five-year mandatory minimum exists for possession of more than five grams of crack cocaine, whereas possession of the same amount of powder cocaine remains a misdemeanor, with mandatory minimums of fifteen days for the second offense.

The Democratic Party should advocate the repeal of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws at the state level as well as those provisions under the federal 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act, the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act, the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the 1994 Crime Act.

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