New Crack Cocaine Sentencing Laws
New federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenders went into effect today, lowering the recommended sentencing range for people caught with the drug.
The reduction will be the focus of a Nov. 13 commission hearing to consider whether to make the lower guideline penalty retroactively available to 19,500 crack cocaine offenders who were sentenced previously.
Federal law sets a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine. It takes 500 grams of cocaine powder to warrant the same sentence. The crack-powder disparity has a strong racial dimension because more than four-fifths of crack cocaine offenders in federal courts last year were black.
IMO, this is encouraging--but for most it's too little, too late. Many of the 19,500 affected by today's change have already lost their families, children and all hope after receiving years in prison for what should have been probation had they been caught with "powder" instead.