For Equal Treatment Under the Law

END THE DISPARITY IN PUNISHMENT FOR COCAINE ABUSE

The U.S. Sentencing Commission is taking welcome steps toward ending
an unjust disparity in federal sentences for cocaine-related crimes.
For two decades, people convicted of possessing or selling crack
cocaine have been treated to much harsher penalties than those
involved with powder cocaine. Under federal law, it takes 100 times as
much powder cocaine as crack to draw stiff five- and 10-year mandatory
prison terms.

Target Drug Kingpins

Even if the commission does all it can, it would not be enough to
eliminate the injustice that has disproportionately imprisoned
crack-cocaine offenders. Only Congress can fix what it broke when it
set badly skewed mandatory-minimum prison sentences based on
misinformation.

This is about fair punishment, not about being soft on crime. People
who buy or sell illegal drugs must answer to the law. But that law
should also be consistent among offenders and proportionate to the
crime.

More than 20 years after crack invaded inner cities and alarmed the
public, research has shown that crack is no more addictive, and
perhaps less so, than powder cocaine. Meanwhile, countless tax dollars
have been spent filling prison beds with low-level crack offenders
instead of targeting kingpin drug traffickers.

The Sentencing Commission helped to lessen the unequal punishment by
setting more lenient sentences for crack-cocaine offenses as of Nov.
1. Now the commission is leaning toward applying the new crack
guidelines retroactively. We urge it to do so.

When the commission previously reduced sentences for LSD, marijuana
and Percodan, a painkiller, it made those changes retroactive. The new
guidelines acknowledge that the old crack sentences are
disproportionately tough. Fairness demands that people serving those
sentences be given a chance for relief, too.

The new guidelines should be applied to the 19,500 crack offenders --
about 86 percent of them black -- now in federal prison. Not all of
them would be released at once. Each would have to petition a judge
for sentence reductions that average two years. This isn't much time
off, considering the Draconian sentences that many are serving.

Rebalance Justice

Congress, too, should act to end the sentencing disparities. In 1988
Congress approved mandatory-minimum sentences for simple possession of
crack, the only drug so punished. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Rep.
Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who supported tough-on-crack sentences, now
are leading the push for reform. They have filed two of the five bills
that would reduce the chasm between crack- and powder-cocaine sentences.

The bill, S 1711, would erase the sentencing disparities altogether,
increase penalties for traffickers and pay for treatment programs in
prisons. The bill would address unfairness in cocaine laws and
rebalance the scales of justice.