COCAINE SENTENCING DISPARITY MUST END

Attorney General Eric Holder Is Right to Put This at the Top of His
Reform List.

We hope Congress was listening Wednesday when the nation's top
prosecutor, Attorney General Eric Holder, told the Senate: "There are
few areas of the law that cry out for reform more than federal
cocaine sentencing policy."

Pending legislation in both houses of Congress would eliminate the
so-called "100-to-1" ratio between crack and powder cocaine. That
ratio means that offenders get a five-year mandatory minimum prison
sentence for a crime involving 5 grams of crack -- but that it takes
a hundred times that amount (500 grams) of powder cocaine to trigger
the same prison term. Fifty grams of crack -- or 5,000 grams of
powder cocaine -- garners a 10-year mandatory minimum.

Holder is right to put cocaine at the top of his reform list: No
criminal-sentencing laws are more unjust and indefensible than those
for federal crack-cocaine crimes. And for years, bipartisan support
has been building to reform these laws. Republicans, Democrats, the
Department of Justice, judges, the public, criminal-justice experts
and the U.S. Sentencing Commission agree that the sentencing
disparity isn't just unfair, it's also a nasty smear on the justice system.

The impact of that disparity falls heavily on African-Americans, who
comprise 80 percent of those serving federal sentences for crack
cocaine. Their sentences are almost 10 years on average, even though
a typical crack-cocaine case involves just 52 grams -- the size of a
candy bar -- and the defendants are overwhelmingly nonviolent and
low-level. A conviction for 52 grams of powder cocaine would generate
a prison sentence of less than two years.

An alarming byproduct of this kind of racial disparity is community
distrust of the criminal-justice system. Police and judges confirm
that citizens won't report crack crimes or serve on juries or even
convict in crack cases because they know the defendants will be
subject to unequal and discriminatory sentences.

Despite all of this, Congress has been painfully slow to act. It
should take a lesson from Minnesota's sentencing law and pass the
Fair Sentencing Act of 2009, a bill that would eliminate the
sentencing difference between crack and powder cocaine. (Minnesota
law makes no distinction.)

Public safety has a price -- one that, for the most part, we are
willing to pay. But when a bad sentencing policy locks up the wrong
people for too long, alienates the public, and frustrates prosecutors
and defense attorneys alike, it's time to take a hard second look and
make some adjustments. In Holder's words, "the stakes are simply too
high to let reform in this area wait any longer."