Reason: Tennessee Passes Drug-Free School Zone Reforms Following Reason Investigation
"I'm really excited that the first major sentencing reform bill to pass the Tennessee legislature in decades is drug-free school zone reform," says Lauren Krisai, senior policy analyst at the U.S. Justice Action Network and co-author of Reason's investigation. "Once lawmakers saw how expansive these zones were and how pervasive they've been for so many communities, it was clear that reform was needed."
Civil liberties groups, and even some current and former prosecutors, say such drug-free school zone laws are rarely, if ever, used to prosecute drug cases involving minors. Instead, prosecutors use the threat of a drug-free school zone charge and accompanying mandatory minimum sentence to squeeze guilty pleas out of defendants who had no idea they were in a zone. (In a few cases, Reason found police intentionally set up drug deals inside school zones to secure enhanced charges.)