MAKE REFORM OF CRACK SENTENCES RETROACTIVE

Harsher Penalties For One Form Of Cocaine Never Had Moral Basis

What do you call the idea of turning nearly 20,000 drug criminals
loose from prison two years or more before they've served their full
sentences? A good start.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission recently lowered its sentencing
guidelines for offenses involving crack cocaine to bring them in line
with the sentences involving powder cocaine. Simple possession of just
5 grams of crack -- less than two of those little sugar packs on
restaurant tables -- has carried a five-year mandatory sentence. You
had to get caught with 500 grams of powder to hit the five-year mandatory.

Now the commission is apparently on the verge of making the adjustment
retroactive. The commission in the past also tweaked LSD, OxyContin
and other drug sentences when faddish politics had thrown them out of
whack. Judges and civil rights organizations have long protested the
disparity in crack and powder sentences and guidelines, and the
Criminal Law Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference has supported
applying the changes to current crack prisoners.

There is no moral basis for levying draconian sentences on one group
while levying lesser, more proportionate sentences on another for the
same crimes. Hysteria bloats sentences The grossly skewed sentences
are the product of hysteria about crack in the 1980s that demagogic
politics enthusiastically riled up and then serviced with
grandstanding crackdowns, as clamoring pols outbid one another in the
severity of the prison sentences they were promoting.The consequences
have been especially devastating in the black community, with ill
effects that have rippled through the whole society. Scores of
thousands of men, mainly, have been unnecessarily burdened with prison
records that have made them near-hopeless prospects for employment or
marriage.

Cheaper than powder cocaine, crack became the drug of the poor, with
the result that some 81 percent of crack prisoners are African
American -- although two-thirds of users are white and Hispanic. And
blacks serve an average 57 months for drug offenses, nearly equal the
average 61 months whites serve for violent crimes.

Making crack and powder sentencing congruent is a step years overdue,
but welcome as the step is, it is only a small one toward a broadly
sensible and effective engagement with the drug challenge.

Prevention, not prison The futility of essentially just criminalizing
the issue ought to be apparent to everyone by now. As documented by
The Sentencing Project, an estimable advocacy group, drug offenders
account for more than half of federal prisoners and have overwhelmed
state prisons. Even so, drug arrests hit a record 1.8 million in 2005.

Except where there's attendant violence or commercial-level
trafficking, drug policy should emphasize prevention, education and
treatment. All of those have been effective in the relatively rare
instances in which they have been seriously applied.

After generations of failed criminalization, isn't it about time to
begin doing what we know actually makes a difference for the better?