As a number of bloggers have noted, the U.S. Sentencing Commission will be hearing testimony today about whether their new guidelines reducing the gross and arbitrary disparity between sentences for crack and powdered cocaine should be applied retroactively. Sentencing Law and Policy points to this WaPo story, noting that upwards of 90 percent of those affected by the change would be black, while only 6 percent are white. Hopefully the Commission will act to address this injustice for those who have already been affected. Jeralyn Merritt concludes with this argument:
Reducing the crack penalties is just the beginning. A renewed fight to get Congress to change mandatory minimum sentences based on drug quantity alone must come next. Perhaps with the internet's ability to spread the word, it will come, before all those serving life sentences die in prison of old age and can still benefit from it.
Evidently, the War on (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs -- expensive, ineffective, and where civil liberties go to die -- is in need of serious reform. One thing I've wondered is how politically damaging it would be at this point to oppose at least its most draconian aspects. Hopefully some popular incumbents with a conscience will allow us to find out sooner rather than later. It's very important, however, for drug laws to be applied more equitably if headway in reforming them is going to be viable.
--Scott Lemieux
