Pubdate: Mon, 11 Aug 2014
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248

COCAINE SENTENCES THAT MAKE SENSE

California should do away with the sentencing disparity between crack 
and powder cocaine.

California, like the rest of the nation, is slowly rousing itself 
after a generation-long binge of harsh and unthinking criminal 
sentences, especially for nonviolent crimes such as drug possession 
and sale. Our morning-after realizations include the degree to which 
we have over-incarcerated, sending too many people to prison with too 
little notion of how they were supposed to change while locked up, or 
how they were expected to make their way in the world when they got out.

There is also an emerging understanding of the interplay between the 
war on drugs, the tough-on-crime movement and race.

The federal Anti-Drug Use Act of 1986 created separate sentencing 
schemes for powder cocaine, which in popular culture was seen as the 
drug of choice for white entertainers and Wall Street bankers, and 
rock cocaine, or crack, which was associated with poverty and urban 
decay, especially in African American neighborhoods. Under the new 
law, it took a tenth of the amount of crack cocaine by weight to 
trigger the same five-or 10-year mandatory minimum sentence as powder 
cocaine. Crack sentences ended up being 100 times harsher than 
sentences for powder cocaine.

California and a dozen other states quickly enacted similar laws that 
affected not merely the amount of time served in prison but the 
threshold for forfeiture of a dealer's - or mere possessor's - cars, 
boats, planes and other property.

All of these changes in state and federal law helped lead to a 
culture of intervention and rehabilitation as the proper response to 
drug abuse and addiction among many wealthy and middle-class whites 
but a practice of arrest and imprisonment for blacks. By the second 
half of the 1980s, the number of African Americans locked up on 
cocaine charges exceeded that of whites, even though blacks make up 
only about 15% of the population. Almost half of prison admissions 
for blacks were due to drug charges, compared with less than a 
quarter for whites. Blacks were stopped and frisked more, arrested 
more, convicted more and given longer sentences on drug charges than 
whites, although most studies showed, and continue to show, about the 
same percentages of drug use and sales among African Americans and whites.

There were attempts to explain. Some argued that the disparities were 
needed because crack is more addictive than powder cocaine - except 
that turns out not to be true. Some argued that crack delivered a 
quicker although shorter high. So what?

In her 2010 book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of 
Colorblindness," legal scholar Michelle Alexander argued that the 
drug laws and the disproportionate imprisonment of African Americans 
are a continuation of the nation's historical repression of African 
Americans. Critiques from the left and right have attempted to take 
on whether such repression is real and, if so, conscious, 
subconscious, coincidental or something else. It is a worthy and 
consequential discussion.

But consensus on Alexander's argument need not be a precondition to 
undoing the mistakes made in the sentencing disparities between crack 
and powder cocaine. Congress already has seen that. In 2010, it 
adopted the Fair Sentencing Act, which brings sentences for one form 
of cocaine more in line with the other.

Now it is California's turn. Lawmakers have twice rejected bills to 
follow the federal government's lead on the issue. This year, SB 1010 
by state Sen. Holly Mitchell, a Democrat who represents neighborhoods 
in Los Angeles from the San Fernando Valley to Silver Lake and 
Century City to South L.A., has passed the Senate and is up for a 
vote this week in the Assembly.

The bill would not eliminate property forfeitures or stiff prison 
sentences for drug use or sales. It would not end the conversation 
about over-incarceration or the war on drugs.

But it would do away with much of the sentencing disparity between 
crack and powder cocaine, and at least part of the disparity between 
the sentencing of blacks and whites for possession and sale of the 
same controlled substance. It is time. The Assembly should pass the 
bill, send it to the governor and help California continue its 
soulsearching about drugs, crime, sentencing and race.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom