More equity in cocaine sentencing

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.

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