Pubdate: Fri, 02 Nov 2007
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2007 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact: http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=CFF0C5E4
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/83
Author: Alexandra Marks, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Cited: US Sentencing Commission http://www.ussc.gov
Cited: Families Against Mandatory Minimums http://www.famm.org
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/crack+cocaine
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?244 (Sentencing - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

MORE EQUITY IN COCAINE SENTENCING

Revised Guidelines Lessen Disparity in Prison Terms for Crack Versus Powder.

A change in federal sentencing guidelines has quietly narrowed the 
huge discrepancy in prison time for convictions involving powder 
versus crack cocaine, after a 20-year battle over the issue.

Since 1988, possession of five grams of crack cocaine - an amount 
equal to five packets of sugar substitute - landed a person in jail 
for five years. But people caught with cocaine powder would have to 
possess 100 times that amount, or 500 grams, to get the same 
five-year stint behind bars.

It's known as the 100-to-1 ratio. And because most people convicted 
of crack offenses are black and most convicted of powder cocaine 
offenses are white, critics have long argued that the disparity 
represents an egregious racial inequity in America's criminal-justice system.

This week the US Sentencing Commission, with little fanfare, 
officially reduced its recommended sentences for crack-related 
offenses. The commission announced last spring that it intended to 
make the change, and Congress had until Nov. 1 to stop the move. It 
didn't, and the revised guidelines became effective Thursday.

As a result, up to 4 in 5 people found guilty of crack-cocaine 
offenses will get sentences that are, on average, 16 months shorter 
than they would have been under the former guidelines. Opponents of 
the 100-to-1 ratio applaud the commission's move, but they say it's 
just a first step because the so-called mandatory minimum sentences 
set by Congress remain on the books.

"We really commend the commission for taking this modest but 
important step," says Mary Price, general counsel and vice president 
of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a Washington-based advocacy 
group. "The commission has told Congress for years that the 
crack-cocaine penalties are unduly and unnecessarily severe."

In a May report to Congress, the US Sentencing Commission said the 
disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing guidelines 
"continues to come under almost universal criticism from 
representatives of the Judiciary, criminal justice practitioners, 
academics, and community interest groups, and inaction in this area 
is of increasing concern to many, including the Commission."

That was the fourth time the commission had recommended that Congress 
change the law, but it never has. So the commission on its own 
reduced its recommended sentences. That gives judges more discretion, 
but the "mandatory minimum" law that requires five years for 
possession of five grams of crack still stands.

"The commission emphasized and expressed its strong view that the 
amendment is only a partial solution to some of the problems 
associated with the 100-to-1 drug quantity ratio," it said in a 
statement in April. "Any comprehensive solution to the 100-to-1 drug 
quantity ratio would require ... legislative action by Congress." It 
also urged Congress to act swiftly.

To make sense of that, one needs to understand the difference between 
federal sentencing guidelines and the congressionally imposed 
mandatory minimum sentences. In the 1980s, Congress created the US 
Sentencing Commission to guard against "unwarranted sentence 
disparities among defendants with similar criminal records who have 
been found guilty of similar criminal conduct," according to the commission.

While the commission was developing its guidelines, Congress in 1986 
approved a law establishing "mandatory minimum" penalties for many 
drug offenses. At the time, the crack epidemic was ravaging 
inner-city neighborhoods, mostly, and the related violence helped 
provoke a "get tough on crime" backlash. Many lawmakers expected that 
long, mandatory sentences for possessing or selling crack would 
discourage drug use. And because many perceived crack to be much more 
destructive than powder cocaine, Congress established the 100-to-1 
ratio. In 1988, it passed another law that established a mandatory 
minimum penalty for simple possession of crack cocaine.

"This wasn't a racially motivated thing," says Todd Gaziano of the 
Heritage Foundation in Washington, a conservative think tank. "Crack 
was destroying the inner cities; even the Congressional Black Caucus 
supported it."

Since then, studies have shown that the crack-versus-powder 
sentencing disparity disproportionately affects minorities. Last 
year, 82 percent of crack defendants were black, according to the 
sentencing commission, compared with 9 percent who were white. For 
powder cocaine, it was almost the opposite: About 80 percent of 
powder-cocaine defendants were white and less than 14 percent were black.

Such statistics have led many conservatives to agree that the 
sentencing disparity is too harsh.

Several bipartisan bills pending in Congress would whittle the 
disparity by increasing the penalties related to powder cocaine while 
reducing the mandatory minimum related to crack. One 
Republican-sponsored bill would simply increase the powder-cocaine 
penalty to the penalty level for crack.

Critics of the 100-to-1 ratio, meanwhile, are urging the commission 
to make its change retroactive. Commissioners plan a Nov. 13 hearing 
to determine if that's feasible. If the change were retroactive, more 
than 19,500 people now serving time for crack offenses could see 
their sentences reduced by an average of 27 months.

"We believe it would be cruelly ironic to recognize and correct the 
injustice of the guideline that has lengthened thousands of 
sentences, and then deny the benefit to the very prisoners whose 
unjust sentences they identified and relied on for evidence of its 
flawed operation and injustice," says Ms. Price of FAMM.

Previously, when the commission lessened sentencing guidelines for 
LSD and possession of marijuana plants, the changes were retroactive. 
But that is unusual. Of 696 amendments made to guidelines since their 
inception, only 25 were applied retroactively, says a commission spokesman. 
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