FAIR SENTENCE: IT'S TIME TO BALANCE THE SCALES ON COCAINE
PENALTIES

Justice is supposed to be blind, especially colorblind. But legal and
civil rights advocates have agreed that hasn't been the case in
sentencing crack cocaine offenders. Usually they have been black, and
usually they have received harsher penalties than middle-class white
offenders convicted in powdered cocaine cases.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, an agency of the federal judicial
branch, is finally moving to correct this inequity.

For years, groups have lobbied for parity in sentencing for crack and
powdered cocaine offenders. Crack cocaine is potentially more
addictive, but its chemical properties are the same as powdered
cocaine. Last spring the commission set more lenient sentencing
guidelines to be issued to crack cocaine offenders in the future. Now
it is weighing retroactively reducing sentences of crack inmates in
federal prisons.

That would be the right thing to do. Under the new proposal, the
sentences of 19,500 federal inmates could be reduced by an average of
27 months. Former inmates would go to halfway houses upon release.

The Bush administration opposes the proposal, but the president can't
make the claim that this is a liberal body. Its voting members include
four persons named by President Bush and three named by former
President Clinton. The chairman, Ricardo H. Hinojosa, nominated to
that post by President Reagan, asked Congress to ease crack sentencing
guidelines earlier this year. He said the racial differences between
crack and other cocaine users set an unwarranted disparity, and he was
right.

Whenever unfairness is identified in American justice, it must be
rooted out. It is encouraging in this case that a new policy from the
commission seems about to do just that, and the states should be
encouraged to follow suit.