However, the gap in disparity was only reduced from astronomical to merely vast.
Through The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, it would raise the minimum quantity of crack cocaine that triggers a five-year mandatory minimum from 5 grams to 28 grams, and from 50 grams to 280 grams to trigger a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence. The amount of powder cocaine required to trigger the five and 10-year mandatory minimums remains the same, at 500 grams and 5 kilograms respectively. The legislation also eliminates the mandatory minimum for simple possession of crack cocaine.
The bill now awaits President Obama’s signature.
The quantity disparity between crack and powder cocaine would move from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1. Although that is a significant reduction, it is still not fair. Advocates have long sought the complete elimination of the sentencing disparity that has doled out excessive and harsh penalties that created unwarranted racial disparities in federal prisons. Currently, 80 percent of crack cocaine defendants are African American, according to the Sentencing Project, and possession of as little as 5 grams of crack cocaine subjects defendants to a mandatory five-year prison term.
“Despite this historic progress, federal mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenses continue to be too long, and contribute to significant racial disparity and dangerous overcrowding in the Bureau of Prisons,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. “Half of the people held in federal custody are incarcerated for drug offenses due to the mandatory sentences prescribed for these generally nonviolent offenses.”
The U.S. Sentencing Commission predicts the current penalties for crack cocaine offenses could impact nearly 3,000 defendants a year by reducing their average sentence by 27 months.
For people currently serving time for low-level crack cocaine offenses, the bill’s passage will not impact their fate. The Sentencing Project urges Congress, the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the president to apply the sentencing adjustments mandated in the Fair Sentencing Act retroactively.
For tireless change agents such as Congresswomen Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who have been fighting to change the sentencing laws for the better part of 20 years, you may take a rest for now. But your work on this issue is not yet complete. –terry shropshire
