Jul 24th, 2009
Posted by Emily Zia, Washington Legislative Office at 11:33am	Criminal Justice, Criminal Law Reform, Defending Targets of Discrimination

Finally Cracking the Disparity: It's About Time!

Wednesday marked a historic moment: the House of Representatives did a markup of the long-awaited Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009 (H.R. 3245), sponsored by Rep. Robert Scott (D-Va.). The ACLU has been pushing for this moment for the past 22 years. Why is this bill so significant?

Ever since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, there has been a huge disparity between the sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine (different forms of the same drug). All it takes is for a person to have five grams of crack cocaine (little more than a packet of sugar) and they're guaranteed a minimum sentence of five years. But if a person has powder cocaine instead, things will look much, much brighter: it takes possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine to give a person the same exact five-year sentence. That's a ratio of 100-to-1 — a huge disparity that has fallen disproportionately on African-Americans. These are the kinds of laws that have caused the ranks of the incarcerated to swell to nearly 2.5 million, or one in every 100 adult Americans (PDF).

In the scheme of things, this may seem like an irrelevant point. What does it matter? People just shouldn't do cocaine, period. Or, crack addicts should simply use powder cocaine, right? Wrong. Crack arrestees are overwhelmingly black. More than 80 percent of the people prosecuted for crack possession are African-American, despite the fact that the majority of crack users are either white or Hispanic.

Although the original intent of the legislation was to simply "crack down" on crack cocaine use, it had the inadvertent effect of discriminating against African-Americans. Countless numbers of people like Kemba Smith have been given ridiculous, excessive prison sentences (24 1/2 years, in Smith's case) for their first nonviolent offences.

However, we may finally be at the end of this dark tunnel: with the passage of the Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009, the disparity may finally be coming to an end. We commend Rep. Scott and his cosponsors for creating this long overdue bill and voting to finally eliminate the disparity. This is a very encouraging first step in reforming cocaine sentencing, and we are very excited to finally see it after 22 years. Take action and join us in urging Congress to pass this important crack cocaine bill. It's now up to Congress to keep the momentum going.

Permalink |	Criminal Justice, Criminal Law Reform, Defending Targets of Discrimination

1. Maggie Says:
   Jul 24th, 2009 at 12:29pm

   I am so glad you got your sentencing changed. Now the families of addicts and sellers can certainly rest in their beds at night. And pray to God that they wake up the next morning.

   Live the life it is not something I would wish for anyone.

2. Paen Says:
   Jul 25th, 2009 at 2:20pm

   This kind of nonsense is why the jury system can be so valuable.If jurys have the guts to refuse to convict the will change and victims like Kembe Smith would be saved.Prosecuters can claim that it's the duty of jurys to blindly follow the law but thats rubbish because jurys are the last line of defense against such tyranny.

3. Alvin McCuistion Says:
   Jul 26th, 2009 at 11:01pm

   This also brings up the ridiculous mandatory sentencing problem. A law like this removes sentencing from the judiciary where it belongs to the legislature where it doesn't. It prohibits the mingling of mercy with justice or prevents judges from considering special circumstances. Such a law should be unconstitutional on its face.

4. Anonymous Says:
   Jul 27th, 2009 at 2:51pm

   Dear Bleeding Heart Libs,
   Cry me a freaking river. I work and I get drug tested and it is not a hardship to me so why should it be for drug dealers who are sitting on there behinds living off of the working class

5. roald Says:
   Jul 27th, 2009 at 8:35pm

   Maggie - I agree. I would not want to live the life of an addict or be the member of an addict's family. The questions, however are (1) why don't we treat addiction like the disease it is and (2) how can we treat one group of addicts as criminals (crack addicts) more harshly than another group (powder cocaine addicts) and de-criminalize yet the behavior of groups of addicts (alcoholics, tobacco smokers, gamblers, etc)?

6. Maggie Says:
   Jul 28th, 2009 at 5:59pm

   Roald, the answer to #1 is that people do not want these halfway houses etc in their neighborhoods. Hospitals, VA take them in to detox but that is all. The halfway houses help them to face their addictions and try to make them a part of the solution and not the problem. If these addicts/alcholics do not reach out to NA or AA they are destine to be lost. That is an unfortunate truth. Also State,Counties and VA are paying for this care. VA still pays but State and counties are cutting programs.

   #2 Addicts/Acholics generally pay with jail time, restitution etc. Took the Courts and legislatures a long time to start punishing the Alcoholic. But it now happens more frequently and it should. Gamblers - mob takes care of them. The rest tobacco smokers, overeaters, junk eaters etc are habits that are hard to break. Don't know the answer to that one.

7. Paen Says:
   Jul 29th, 2009 at 1:53pm

   Dear right winger you might enjoy peeing into a bottle and living in a police state but some of us would prefer to be free.

8. Steve Says:
   Jul 29th, 2009 at 11:22pm

   Paen....as one who transports school-children for a living, would you prefer they test me to make sure I'm drug free, or ban drug-testing altogether and thus run the risk of children getting killed because I was intoxicated on drugs? The ones who are opposed to random drug-test are the ones who are doing illegal drugs. I hear all to often of bus-drivers who get into accidents because they board their buses under the influence. From what I read from the post on the far-left, I should have the constitutional right to drive my bus stoned....providing it is not one of your children who are killed.

9. roald Says:
   Jul 31st, 2009 at 2:01pm

   Steve - once again you distort rather than clarify. There is no doubt that people whose impairment (by legal or illegal substances) would put the public at risk should be monitored. The question you do not answer is why use of one intoxicant is punished so differently than another.

   Read some of Maggie's comments. She does not need to obfuscate to make her point.

10. Steve Says:
    Aug 2nd, 2009 at 12:57am

    Roald.....I was simply responding to another ones' comment. If you would like to know how I feel about this; if you use, you lose, regardless of the drug. I believe race has little to do with it. I recall former Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry was busted in a sting posessing crack. How much time did he get? It's who has the money, not their racial background. BTW, what is the ACLU's position on random drug-testing for someone in my profession?

11. roald Says:
    Aug 10th, 2009 at 10:01pm

    Steve - I re-read your post and now understand the point you were making.

    I'm not with the ACLU and don't know their position on drug screening of people in positions of responsibility such as yours. Some of their articles show that they are against random tests when these responsibilities do not exist.

    Personally, I have no problem with testing pilots, drivers, and others responsible for public safety. I would like to start with elected officials.

    I am curious about your position on the unequal punishment for different forms of the same drug, especially when the impact is greater on minorities/the poor and why we don't treat addiction as the disease it is.

12. Jay Rau Says:
    Sep 2nd, 2009 at 11:45pm

    I'm glad that this act did even things up a bit. Yes, the crack laws brought in more blacks than whites. I was awaiting for prison location into the feds when the crack riots broke out in the fed prisons because this fell through back in 1996. The feds made up for it by uping the guidlines for Meth to bring in more white addicts. In the prisions I was in most blacks were in for crack and most white were in for Meth. http://www.soberliving.com

13. Anonymous Says:
    Dec 2nd, 2009 at 2:43pm

    HR3245 comes to the floor...let your reps know how you feel...

14. Elaine Says:
    Dec 12th, 2009 at 6:44pm

    I applaud the House for its passage of H. R. 3245. It is certainly long past due. I also see an even greater issue which needs to be dealt with. In many cases law enforcement and federal prosecutors are themselves breaking the law in order to get convictions on innocent people. Prosecutors often use unreasonable scare tactics and tell blatant lies to get offenders to take pleas even though they are innocent. The entire justice system and their tactics need to be investigated and corrected. Our nation appears to have lost all sense of justice and fair play when it comes to its citizens, especially black men. We have no conscience and compassion when it comes to human life. Sentencing a non-violent offender from 15 to 20 years imprisonment is a travesty of justice. How can we justify taking a mother/father from their children and families for such a lenghtly period of time for what is usually only offenders trying to support their own drug habits. We need to focus more on offering the help needed to rehabilitate these persons who are suffering from addiction and not crime. How can our country go to foreign nation and tell that nation how to treat its people when we don't know how to treat our own. We sacrifice our children to fight for truth and justice in other nation, but we don't even have it at home. Getting a conviction appears to be more important than the integrity of our justice system. Once we have the conviction, it ends there; there is no system for rehabilitation.