Word: reformer
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...Donoghue once had hope for a positive change in her son's situation. That was because there was a movement to change the Rockefeller laws. The momentum behind that reform, however, has now stagnated as prosecutors and legislators fear that changes in the law are being used as loopholes to free drug lords. With no light at the end of the tunnel, she and other activists fighting for a repeal feel the laws may never change and many of the state's imprisoned - her son included - continue to languish in jail. "The movement is definitely stalled, and we're trying...
Right now, the only hope for a change is a prison sentencing reform committee set up by Gov. Eliot Spitzer that has only recently begun to hold preliminary meetings and whose final report is not expected until early 2008. The activists remain committed in their cause, but for now can only deal with the frustration of having a loved one jailed under what they feel are unfair rules. Critics say that the law ignores major drug dealers and only imprisons minor players in the drug trade. For this reason, they argue, it incarcerates a disproportionate number of minorities. Indeed, since...
Over the last decade, activists, ex-convicts, families, politicians and even celebrities have become increasingly vocal about the laws. Reforms to the sentencing structure were enacted with the 2004 Drug Law Reform Act, which allows for reduced retroactive sentencing, and at first seemed to bring the laws closer to repeal. But they have only applied to about 1,000 people and only 350 have been released, says Anthony Papa, an official with the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group committed to changing the nation's drug laws. The reforms, he says, were not enough because the change applies...
...this was sort of a buyoff to satisfy people who have been fighting for years," said Papa, who himself was sentenced to 15 years to life after selling cocaine to undercover cops, but granted clemency by then-Gov. George Pataki in 1997. "People saw it was watered-down reform because it really destroyed the movement, because now legislators have a tool they can use to say 'We have a law now, lets move...
...gone disastrously, dragging down the President's popularity and making even staunch Republicans skittish, but some of the policies Rove was more directly responsible for - the vast expansion of Medicare, the mutation of the G.O.P. into a party of big government, the spectacular failure of Bush's effort to "reform" Social Security through partial privatization - have all weighed heavily on the G.O.P., turning it for the first time since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 into a party in retreat. In the 2006 mid-terms, Rove assured nervous Republicans that they could win again if they maligned their Democratic opponents...