A Short Note On a Small "Victory"- Crack Cocaine Sentencing

Commentary-Revised December 17, 2007


One of the most bizarre twists in the United States Sentencing Guidelines that have for a generation controlled judicial discretion in the federal system has been the distinction drawn in many federal sentences between crack cocaine and ‘straight’ cocaine. Not entirely by accident that difference in severity for crack cocaine has been reflected in the disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics incarcerated for the crime. Recently the United States Sentencing Commission, the governmental organization that established the guidelines, did an about face for many of the crack cocaine offenses and reduced the disparity. Since the hysteria over crack cocaine has died down and further information has indicated that the differences between the two forms of the drug is not significant the Commission voted 7-0, over Bush Administration objections, to retroactively permit challenges to sentences in many of these cases. An estimated 20,000 prisoners could be positively affected by the decision.

Although leftists do not share the illusions in the capitalist justice system that one commissioner, Federal Judge William Sessions of the District Court in Vermont, expressed when declaring that this decision goes a long way to insuring a ‘color blind’ justice system we nevertheless will take such a 'victory’ when it comes along. And that I think is the point here. The Federal system is loaded, no, over- loaded with prisoners sentenced during the heyday of the “war against drugs” for crimes that should never have been crimes in the first place. I have argued, and continue to argue today, that drugs should be decriminalized. In most cases possession of drugs constitutes a personal preference and as such are so-called ‘crimes without victims’ and that is where it should be left-out of the court system. One estimate has it that some 60,000 of the over 200, 000 prisoners in federal jails are there for some drug related crime. That alone tells the tale. Moreover, multiply that figure by the numbers of drug prisoners in state and local facilities and one can only conclude that something is very wrong here. Down with the ‘war against drugs’. Decriminalize drug use now.