DRUG LAWS' ABSENCE OF JUSTICE

When Attorney General Michael Mukasey was working to persuade
Congress to stop a U.S. Sentencing Commission decision to allow
federal judges to reduce the sentences of some 19,500 federal
inmates serving time for crack cocaine offenses, he told the
Fraternal Order of Police that federal crack offenders "are some of
the most serious and violent offenders in the federal system."

Drug lords, rejoice. If your average crack offender represents the
most dangerous convicts in the federal system, then a lot of
small-time hoods and mid-level lackeys who don't pack heat are
warming prison beds that should be meant for kingpins and their
armed henchmen.

You've probably read about the disparity in federal mandatory
minimum sentences before. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 mandated a
five-year minimum sentence for possession of five grams of crack
cocaine or 500 grams of powdered cocaine. Civil rights groups have
attacked the 100-1 volume disparity on racial grounds. The U.S.
Sentencing Commission found that more than 80 percent of crack
offenders are black, while some 80 percent of powdered cocaine
offenders are white.

Over the years, the sentencing commission has recommended narrowing
the crack-powder gap. In May, the commission also called for a
repeal of mandatory minimum sentences for simple possession of
cocaine in either form, in the belief that federal law
enforcement should concentrate on big-volume dealers. Congress
has failed to act.

Last year the sentencing commission made a modest reduction in crack
sentences and also allowed inmates to petition for reduced sentences
starting March 3. Because Congress did not stop the change, more
than 1,500 inmates are eligible to apply this year. The average
sentence reduction, according to the commission, is expected to be 27 months.

If this rule change meant that violent career criminals would be
running wild and free, I'd be leading the charge in protest. It's
true, federal statistics show that 27 percent of powder and 43
percent of crack offenses in 2005 were broadly defined as involving
weapons - but that definition can apply to "any participant" of a
deal in which someone else has a knife or a gun. When the commission
looked for crimes that involved injury, death, or threats of injury
or death, it found that 90 percent of crack offenses "did not have
violence associated with them." So if these are the most violent
offenders, as Mukasey says, the feds are going after sissies.

What is more, the commission found in 2002 that that largest portion
of crack offenders - 55 percent - were street-level dealers, while
the largest group of powder cocaine offenders - 33 percent - were
couriers and mules. I'm not saying they shouldn't go to prison, but
that the feds should focus on putting dangerous criminals behind
bars, not these losers.

Eric Sterling, who as a congressional staffer helped write the
draconian 1986 drug-abuse law and later started the Criminal Justice
Policy Foundation as penance, noted that the downside to critics
focusing on the crack-powder disparity as a "civil
rights complaint" is that they neglect the larger problem - cocaine
prosecutions too often target small-time criminals when "the feds
should be going after high-level people, the multikilo multiton
traffickers" - the thugs who have private armies, launder barrels
of money and generally endanger all of society.

As a former federal judge, Mukasey should have more faith in his
erstwhile brethren. As Sterling noted, "Judges aren't going to just
let dangerous people out" - not when they can turn down petitions
filed by the rare drug lord who comes before their bench.

"What passes for a drug kingpin in 99 percent of the cases is
nothing more than a young man who can't even afford a lawyer when
he's hauled into court," a frustrated U.S. District Court Judge
Patrick Murphy of East St. Louis told "60 Minutes" in 2004. "I've
seen very few drug kings."