Former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner told a crowd on Sunday at The Aspen Ideas Festival that she believes the large majority of the drug convictions she handed down over her 17-year career were unwarranted and contributed to the elimination of a generation of African-American men.
Of the 500 sanctions doled out over her tenure, Gertner said 80 percent of them were "unfair and disproportionate," The Atlantic reported.
Gertner was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and presided over trials for 17 years before leaving the bench in 2011 to work for Harvard University so she could "write about these stories" and write about "how it came to pass that I was obliged to sentence people to terms that, frankly, made no sense under any philosophy."
She said that no retribution or social change could justify such sentences, comparing them to the destruction of European cities in World War II.
The War on Drugs has been the driving force behind the growth of the prison population over the past 35 years, with the number of incarcerated drug offenders increasing twelvefold between 1980 and 2003, according to Human Rights Watch. The more than 1.5 million inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons make up 25 percent of the world's prison population, while the U.S. only has 5 percent of the world's population. Almost half are serving for drug crimes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In 2010, all black men were six times more likely to be incarcerated than all white men.
The U.S. should mimic its decision after World War II, and look to the future and rebuild, rather than punish and seek retribution, according to The Atlantic. "Although we were not remotely the victors of that war, we need a big idea in order to deal with those who were its victims," Gertner said, referring to something similar to a Marshall Plan, where the U.S. gave European nations $13 billion in aid to help rebuild after the end of the war.
"This is a war that I saw destroy lives," Gertner said. "It eliminated a generation of African-American men, covered our racism in ostensibly neutral guidelines and mandatory minimums... and created an intergenerational problem -- although I wasn't on the bench long enough to see this, we know that the sons and daughters of the people we sentenced are in trouble, and are in trouble with the criminal justice system."
