New Guidelines to Adjust Unfair Crack Cocaine Sentencing

By Gabrielle Meury
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON, United States - The United States Sentencing Commission recently ruled that defendants convicted of crack cocaine offenses will be sentenced under new guidelines with lesser penalties beginning March 3. The Commission issued its plan immediately after the Supreme Court ruled in December that federal judges may hand down lighter sentences for crack defendants than those recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.

One of the immediate results of the new guidelines is that disproportionately long sentences will be reduced. Because of the reduced sentences, 1,500 crack cocaine offenders are immediately eligible to petition courts to be released from federal prisons.

The lesser penalties have been instituted in response to wide-spread criticism regarding the sentencing disparity in crack cocaine offenses. Harsh penalties were first mandated by Congress under the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Federal crack cocaine offenders face criminal sentences that are uniquely severe compared to those imposed on other federal drug offenders. The current sentencing structure for cocaine offenses imposes five and ten year mandatory minimum sentences for threshold quantities of cocaine. Under what is commonly referred to as the “100-to-1” cocaine sentencing disparity, it takes one hundred times as much powder cocaine as crack cocaine to trigger the federal mandatory minimums. Because of the 100-to-1 differential, sentences for crack offenders are far higher than those for powder cocaine offenders who engage in equivalent conduct.

When Congress enacted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, little was known about crack cocaine and Congress adopted uniquely severe penalties for crack offenders. Today, data reveals that the dangers of crack do not differ significantly from powder cocaine. The harsh sentencing has also had little deterrent effect on the demand or availability of the drug. As a result of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, thousands of low-level offenders have been incarcerated, putting a strain on the already overflowing federal prison population. Data from the United States Sentencing Commission reveals that in 2000, over 84 percent of federal crack defendants were African American.

For more information, please see:
New York Times- Mukasey Warns of Drug Case Releases– 8 February 2008

Washington Post- Crack Offenders Set for Release Mostly Nonviolent, Study Says- 22 February 2008

Human Rights Watch- Cracked Justice: Addressing the Unfairness in Cocaine Sentencing - 27 February 2008

Families Against Mandatory Minimums- General Mukasey: Where is your evidence on crack? - 26 February 2008