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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:20 pm
Time: 10:20 pm
Results for drug offenses (u.s.)
1 results foundAuthor: Porter, Nicole D. Title: Cracked Justice Summary: In August 2010 President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), historic legislation that reduced the quantity-based sentencing differential between federal crack and powder cocaine convictions that resulted in significant racial disparities and excessive penalties. The bipartisan measure addressed the 100-to-1 disparity that punished defendants with five grams of crack cocaine (also known as cocaine base) with the same five-year mandatory minimum penalty imposed on powder cocaine defendants with 100 times that amount. Lawmakers rushed to establish the disparity and stiff sentences for crack cocaine in 1986 when the growing hysteria around the drug’s emergence in urban communities climaxed because of the death of a college basketball star whose overdose, officials believed, was caused by crack cocaine. The policy advances at the federal level, which reduced the disparity to 18-to-1, provide an opening for reevaluating similar state policies enacted during the height of the crack cocaine “epidemic,” and followed the lead of Congress. While each state maintains its own laws governing offenses involving crack cocaine, and none maintain the extreme 100-to-1 differential between crack and powder cocaine, the harsh penalties for low-level crack cocaine offenses are considerable and produce significant consequences. Today 13 states maintain sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses. These include: In Missouri, where a defendant convicted of selling six grams of crack cocaine faces the same prison term –a ten-year mandatory minimum – as someone who sells 450 grams of powder cocaine, or 75 times that amount.. In Oklahoma, which maintains a 6-to-1 quantity-based sentencing disparity, a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence is triggered for five grams of crack cocaine and 28 grams of powder cocaine. In Arizona, which has a 12-to-1 disparity, nine grams of powder cocaine or less than a gram of crack cocaine trigger five-year prison terms for trafficking offenses. Harsh drug penalties like these are a contributing factor to the exceptionally high rates of incarceration and overcrowding in state prison facilities. During the 1980s, policy responses to drug abuse deprioritized treatment in favor of enforcement and sentencing enhancements. A quadrupling of investments in drug enforcement ramped up drug arrests.1 Moreover, since the early days of the war on drugs, the number of Americans incarcerated for drug offenses in state prisons has increased from 19,000 in 1980 to 265,000 by 2008. Fiscal pressure to tighten state corrections budgets, along with mounting evidence documenting the unfair and unwarranted structure of these sentencing laws, suggests that lawmakers should reexamine the sentencing differential between crack and powder cocaine. According to the National Governors Association, 46 states expect budget deficits this year. High rates of incarceration are expensive to maintain and sentencing changes that limit terms for low-level drug offenses, including crack cocaine, can effectively conserve resources without adverse effects on public safety. States like Kansas, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey have enacted policy changes in recent years that significantly reduced prison populations, while maintaining public safety and curbing the cost of incarceration. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2011. 18p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 30, 2012 at: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/dp_Cracked%20Justice.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/dp_Cracked%20Justice.pdf Shelf Number: 125099 Keywords: Disparities in SentencingDrug Abuse and CrimeDrug OffendersDrug Offenses (U.S.) |