I somehow missed a piece of very important news this week: the House marked up Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott's Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009, which would eliminate the 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for possession of crack cocaine in comparison to powder cocaine. The disparity in sentencing has disproportionately affected African Americans, who are more likely to be caught with the latter instead of the former.
The harsher penalties for crack were driven by misconceptions about crack's potency. Vice President Joe Biden, one of the original sponsors of the anti-drug Abuse Act of 1986, apologized last year saying, "Our intentions were good, but much of our information was bad." While still in the Senate, he introduced a bill to amend the disparity but it didn't go anywhere -- some Republicans introduced alternate bills that would have lessened it, but that's nonsensical: Why provide harsher penalties for the same crime, except to treat people a little less unequally than before?
In a column for Newsweek, Ellis Cose wrote that Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that the administration supports changing the disparate penalties for crack and powder cocaine. Cose also notes that more than 80 percent of federal crack prosecutions are of African Americans -- even though more than two-thirds of those who use crack are white. Amending this disparity is long overdue, and if the bill makes it to the president's desk, he seems likely to sign it.
-- A. Serwer
