JUST FAIR, THAT'S ALL

It took 20 years, but officials who set sentencing guidelines for
federal judges (the U.S. Sentencing Commission) have at last
recognized that those parameters, as applied to people convicted of
offenses involving crack cocaine, were unfair.

Crack, which can be sold in small "rocks," was cast as a powerful,
evil street drug. Powdered cocaine was seen as somehow less harmful,
more social.

Oh, no one put it that way exactly, but those involved with crack have
served sentences many times the length of those who used and sold
powdered cocaine.

Now, in part because of protests from federal judges, the guidelines
are changing, and there will be shorter sentences for crack
convictions (80 percent of them involving black defendants). That
sounds like a fair change, but what about those who already are in
prison -- one out of every 10 federal inmates -- serving long
sentences imposed under the old guidelines? The U.S. Justice
Department is having a hissy over suggestions that those individuals
ought to benefit from the new guidelines as well. Well, they should.
It just doesn't make sense, nor does it constitute real justice, for
people whose crimes were virtually identical to get different
sentences because of the calendar.

The date of the change was Nov. 1. By the logic of the Justice
Department, someone convicted of possessing crack cocaine on Oct. 25
and sentenced to a mandatory 5 or 10 years in prison ought to serve
it, even if on Nov. 2 another person were convicted of an identical
crime and got much less time. Certainly it's true that crack cocaine
is dangerously addictive, and it's been associated with violent crime.

So the procedures for release would have to be cautious -- making
sure, for example, that an inmate had completed drug withdrawal.
(Practically, recidivism is common, but that doesn't mean all
opportunities for reclaiming one's life should be forfeited.) And a
graduated release of those in prison to whom the new sentencing rules
would have applied might be appropriate.

But the bottom line is that those convicted of crimes shouldn't have
the severity of their sentence affected by a mere happenstance of timing.