After more than two decades of disproportionately harsh federal crack cocaine sentences, it seems the political stars finally may be aligned to correct this glaring disparity in the nation’s sentencing laws. We hope Congress will move expeditiously on the matter.
Last week, a senior Justice Department official urged lawmakers to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for sale and and possession of crack cocaine to mirror those for powder cocaine.
Back in the 1980s, when crack cocaine was a scary new drug, concerned lawmakers passed harsh mandatory minimum penalties for crack.
The sentences were far more stringent than those for powder cocaine, which is the same drug in a different form.
The disparity has come to be known as the “100-to-1” ratio. Possession of five grams of crack mandates a five-year prison sentence, but it takes possession of 100 times as much powder cocaine to get the same sentence.
The singling out of crack cocaine for extraordinarily harsh penalties has resulted in many more African-Americans going to prison for long terms. That’s because crack is a cheaper form of cocaine more prevalently used by African-Americans in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods.
Lanny Breuer, chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, told a panel last week that in 2006, 82 percent of those convicted of federal crack cocaine violations were African-American and just 9 percent white. In the same year, 27 percent of federal powder offenders were African-American, 14 percent white and 58 percent Hispanic.
The disparate sentencing laws were passed in 1986, in the wake of the shocking cocaine-induced death of basketball star Len Bias.
Bias died at the height of his college sports career, just hours after being drafted by the Boston Celtics. In the months after Bias’ death, it was widely — but incorrectly — reported that he had been using the crack form of cocaine.
Fear about the dangerous new drug was part of the motivation for establishing disparate penalties. The laws almost certainly were not intended to discriminate against any race, but they do and the time has come to rectify that mistake.
We hope Congress moves to bring crack penalties in line with those for powder cocaine. Since the mid-1990s, efforts to modify the disparity have been rebuffed by lawmakers. It is time to right this long-simmering wrong.
