Crack and Powder Laws Headed for Congressional Hearings
By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer
Posted Dec. 13, 2007 – It has taken 20 years for the courts and Congress to right a wrong right when dealing with sentencing for cocaine possession. A day after the U.S. Supreme Court restored power to federal judges to use their discretion when meting out punishment for drug crimes, the U.S. Sentencing Commission gave judges additional authority to reduce prison terms.
This means that for those federal inmates already serving crack cocaine-related terms, shorter sentences and the effective date will be retroactive to Nov. 1 of this year. This could affect more than 19,000 inmates, 86 percent of whom are Black.
On Wednesday, Black lawmakers applauded the Supreme Court and the Sentencing Commission decisions.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) said, “The Commission’s decision today [Wednesday] is a good first start, but it is only a beginning. At a time when our nation’s prison population continues to expand exponentially, at a huge cost to taxpayers, we must get smart about our nation’s drug policy.”
The debate about the fairness of drug sentencing has revolved around race. Poor and Black folks disproportionately used the less expensive form of cocaine, “crack,” and therefore received stiffer sentences than those more affluent users who were more likely to use powder cocaine.
Carolyn Kilpatrick, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that one of her Black colleagues in Congress signed a letter in support of applying this modest guideline change retroactively.
Under the new ruling the guidelines for crack and powder cocaine are more equal.
Conyers calls this a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done. “Congress must act to change crack/powder penalties,” he said. “I intend to hold hearings next year to begin the long-overdue process of changing these unfair laws.”
U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo, vice chairman of the commission, agrees. Castillo told The Baltimore Sun, “It is the right thing to do.”
“There is just no way to justify the ratio of crack cocaine crimes being penalized much more harshly than those involving an equal amount of powder cocaine,” Castillo said.
What do you think, should the punishment be the same for crack and powder?
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
i think its stupid and me also i don’t know who 2 believe b/c u kno she could have been sayin sumthin racial and thats wut i think
“Free at last” I wonder if Martin Luther King, Jr. had that in mind when one considers the Supreme Court decision against one of the most glaringly detrimental policies concerning Blacks in the last decade. What I’m referring to is the disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine offenses versus the powder variety, which has helped fuel a dramatic rise in the nation’s prison population. America’s “War on Drugs” has certainly destroyed families, over burdened the prison system, and stripped the voting rights away from millions of non-violent offenders, particularly Blacks and Browns. Now almost 20,000 federal prisoners are eligible for sentence reduction, helping put an end to a CIA sponsored political strategy. Are you aware of that agenda?
Cocaine is cocaine no matter if it is in rock form or powder, so I feel that it should be punished accordingly. It is all addicting and makes folks do crazy things to themselves and others.
Why should one be treated any different than the other? Oh I forgot, they claim that Blacks are more hooked on crack than Whites, I don’t believe it, but oh well.
Drugs are drugs and so…
FREE RAY DUCK
What else is new. The feds now want to look like they are doing something about the crack and powder coke laws. Yeah, right. Get real, ok. This is nothing more than the feds pulling the wool over the eyes of the peoples for the up coming new pres. voting this fall, ok. Black and white people know that these laws which hammers blacks with pea size crack while slaps the hand of whites with bag size powder coken is a joke. It’s a fact the more blacks does crack than whites therefore blacks are put under the jail for crack while whites get treatment for bags and bags of powder coke are you kidding me. Show those drug out peoples that you feds are doing the right thing by this, ok. I don’t buy it, period!
Blacks serving time for crack and whites getting treatment for cocaine is all of Bill Clinton’s doing, but yet we are running to aid Hilary Clinton like we are house Negroes. Stop the insanity now.
it’s not about who is hooked, it’s about who sells what. young black men go to jail for selling crack cocaine, while young white men who sell powder get less time, it was a racist decision back then to put black men in prison for more time than the young white man who is doing the exact same thing. be real and call it what it is.
SAY NO TO DRUGS!
JUST SAY NO!
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Fools! the penalties are relative to substance. If I had to choose which drug my kid gets busted with; this would be the order. nicotine, alcohol, weed, coke, meth/crack. the punishment goes accordingly. of course the drug war itself is the only conspiracy here worth railing against. its the rich against the poor not white against black. in 50 years we’ll all be brown, broke neo-slave soldiers.
Blacks are also the vast majority of powder cocaine arrests in the United States. The racial argument about sentence disparity is bogus.
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