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AlterNet reports
This week it was announced that Oregon will be expunging the old records of marijuana offenders, along with their new legalization plan. This measure is the farthest that a state has gone to date in regards to applying the new laws to old cases. However, for people who remain in jail for having a plant, the legalization plan does not go far enough.
According to the New York Times (paywall), people who have low-level felony or misdemeanor marijuana charges on their record that are at least ten years old will be eligible for expungement.
While the transition in Oregon is nowhere near what is needed for the hundreds of thousands who are still incarcerated, the aspect that allows for old cases to be expunged is at least a step in the right direction, and is helping people clear their records so they can avoid discrimination.
"Oregon is one of the first states to really grapple with the issue of what do you do with a record of something that used to be a crime and no longer is", law professor Jenny M. Roberts told the New York Times.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday October 05 2015, @03:18AM
No, but the law is the law. Deciding what to do about cases where the law is wrong and has been changed needs to be done carefully. With things like sodomy and mixed-race couples there was a pretty straightforward solution. All of those should have been expunged and the people pardoned.
This isn't one of those cases though. Smoking pot is not a human rights issue the way that anti-miscegenation and anti-sodomy statutes were. You can question the motives of pot prohibition, but it's not even remotely the same as the kind of bigotry that caused the other two.
Consideration should be made on a case by case basis about which ones should be released and which ones should serve out their time. These are people that are mostly in prison for felony charges, not some stupid college kids that got busted with a bong or a dime bag. Many of them are hardened criminals that shouldn't be released until they serve out their sentences.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday October 05 2015, @07:57AM
Why not? What do you think the drug is about? http://newjimcrow.com/ [newjimcrow.com]
Secondly, neither is smoking pot a crime against humanity, so why was the government making it illegal in the first place? If something should never have been illegal, don't you think that instead of telling the viciously convicted they have to suck it up, the government should be forced to (at the very least) apologize, if not make amends.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday October 05 2015, @08:06PM
That line right before the link, that should be "what do you think the drug WAR is about?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Monday October 05 2015, @01:10PM
Actually, the drug laws have a firm grounding in racism. Much of the propaganda around banning marijuana was based on promoting fear that "niggars" would get crazy on weed and rape white women.
Opium laws were focused on working class Chinese.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2015, @02:16PM
This is government telling me what I can do to myself, in my time, in my premises. I don't see much difference whether it's about sex or substances. Unless sex is somehow a holy sacred human right for reasons not linked to reproduction while any other kind of recreation isn't.