Pubdate: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA) Copyright: 2007 PG Publishing Contact: http://www.post-gazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/341 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) FAIR SENTENCE: IT'S TIME TO BALANCE THE SCALES ON COCAINE PENALTIES Justice is supposed to be blind, especially colorblind. But legal and civil rights advocates have agreed that hasn't been the case in sentencing crack cocaine offenders. Usually they have been black, and usually they have received harsher penalties than middle-class white offenders convicted in powdered cocaine cases. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, an agency of the federal judicial branch, is finally moving to correct this inequity. For years, groups have lobbied for parity in sentencing for crack and powdered cocaine offenders. Crack cocaine is potentially more addictive, but its chemical properties are the same as powdered cocaine. Last spring the commission set more lenient sentencing guidelines to be issued to crack cocaine offenders in the future. Now it is weighing retroactively reducing sentences of crack inmates in federal prisons. That would be the right thing to do. Under the new proposal, the sentences of 19,500 federal inmates could be reduced by an average of 27 months. Former inmates would go to halfway houses upon release. The Bush administration opposes the proposal, but the president can't make the claim that this is a liberal body. Its voting members include four persons named by President Bush and three named by former President Clinton. The chairman, Ricardo H. Hinojosa, nominated to that post by President Reagan, asked Congress to ease crack sentencing guidelines earlier this year. He said the racial differences between crack and other cocaine users set an unwarranted disparity, and he was right. Whenever unfairness is identified in American justice, it must be rooted out. It is encouraging in this case that a new policy from the commission seems about to do just that, and the states should be encouraged to follow suit. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek