MAJOR BLOW STRUCK AGAINST RACIST U.S. CRACK SENTENCING RULES

In the history of the civil rights movement there are probably only a
handful of moments in which the decision of a few policymakers
propelled significant change forward. Think of President Truman's
decision to integrate the military or the U.S. Supreme Court's
decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Our nation recently
witnessed another such moment when the U.S. Sentencing Commission
voted unanimously to apply recent sentencing reductions for crack
cocaine offenses retroactively. Although the decision is only a
partial step towards racial equality, it reunites thousands of
families and sets the stage for Congress to enact major reform.

Predictably, Chicken Littles in the Bush administration have
insinuated that 20,000 people will be released from prison tomorrow.
That's just shock and awe. Retroactivity would actually be staggered
over several decades, and the largest one-year release (possibly
2,500 people in the first year) is a drop in the bucket compared to
the 650,000 people released from state and federal prisons last year
because they had served their time. Federal courts will also have the
power to deny a sentencing reduction to people who pose a risk to society.

The Sentencing Commission's decision came only a day after the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that federal judges can sentence individuals
below the guideline recommendation in crack cocaine cases. The
combination of both rulings puts enormous pressure on Congress to
change the statutory mandatory minimums that punish crack cocaine
offenses 100 times more severely than powder cocaine offenses. That
sentencing disparity is responsible for appalling racial inequities
in the criminal justice system. Although the majority of crack users
and sellers are white, more than 80 percent of people incarcerated in
federal prison for crack are black.

Ironically, the biggest obstacle to eliminating the crack/powder
disparity is probably not the Bush administration or law enforcement
but House Democratic leadership. While the Senate Judiciary Committee
is set to debate three reforms bills early next year, no hearings
have been scheduled yet in the House. Many rank-and-file Democrats
support reform, but leadership is reportedly reluctant to even debate
the issue. Their silence gives the impression they don't care about
reducing racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

The struggle to bring some justice to federal cocaine laws is just
one part of a bigger struggle to undo the damage being done by the
war on drugs. In a recent op-ed in New Orleans' Times-Picayune,
former ACLU Executive Director and current Drug Policy Alliance
President Ira Glasser makes the case that drug prohibition is one of
the major civil rights issues of our day.

. "[T]he racially discriminatory origin of most [drug] laws is
reinforced by the disparate impact they have on racially targeted
drug felons. In the states of the Deep South, 30 percent of black men
are barred from voting because of felony convictions. But all of them
are nonetheless counted as citizens for the purpose of determining
congressional representation and electoral college votes. The last
time something like this happened was during slavery, when
three-fifths of slaves were counted in determining congressional
representation.

. "Just as Jim Crow laws were a successor system to slavery in the
attempt to keep blacks subjugated, so drug prohibition has become a
successor system to Jim Crow laws in targeting black citizens,
removing them from civil society and then barring them from the right
to vote while using their bodies to enhance white political power in
Congress and the electoral college."

The Sentencing Commission's decision is a good start in tearing down
this new Jim Crow, but only Congress can repeal the laws that are the
source of the problem.