According to the Associated Press, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that judges can reduce the sentences for crack cocaine crimes. The ruling was based on the Norfolk case of Derrick Kimbrough and gives judges the ability to deal with the disparity between sentencing guidelines for crack and powder cocaine.
Derrick Kimbrough was sentenced in 2005 by U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson in Norfolk to 15 years in federal prison for possessing a small amount of crack cocaine. Jackson’s sentence was four to seven years below recommended guidelines.
By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.
Congress could have fixed this problem a long time ago. I understand why they felt that crack was worse than powder cocaine, but 100 times worse? No. Fortunately, the Sentencing Commission is making changes:
The Sentencing Commission recently changed the guidelines to reduce the disparity in prison time for the two crimes. New guidelines took effect Nov. 1 after Congress took no action to overturn the change.
The commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday afternoon on the retroactive application of the crack cocaine guideline amendment that went into effect on Nov. 1. The commission has estimated 19,500 inmates could apply for sentence reductions under the proposal.
I hope the commission decides to make it retroactive. Our prisons are full of men and women who were given sentences that did not fit the crime.
UPDATE: According to The VLW blog, the Sentencing Commission decided Tuesday afternoon to make the guidelines retroactive.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
A decent decision by the Court, and some positive actions by the Sentencing Commission would be welcome. But at the end of the day, it’s Congress that needs to act on this. And I wouldn’t want to be in the position of relying on Congress for justice.
I would bet that a person on crack creates more crime than someone on powder cocaine.
Why would that be?
Why the disparity in sentencing guidelines – are crack/powder cocaine so different?
rlewis, your bet would be wrong. Criminal activity in support of a drug habit has little to do with what type of habit it is and far more to do with the resources of the addict and the price of the product. A black crackhead may walk into a store and steal all the batteries off the rack while a better educated, white professional cocaine addict may choose to steal all the money out of a trust account, but at the end of the day they’re still responding to their addictions and they’re both still thieves. Eventually the cocaine addict either kicks the habit or ends up in the gutter with the crackhead, so I don’t see how you can distinguish between degrees of desperation in that way. All drug addiction has serious negative consequences for society. Why should we pretend that crack addiction is somehow worse? Our whole societal bent toward putting people in prison for decades for possessing a few ounces of drugs is so wrong-headed I don’t know where to begin. Nothing has caused as much harm to the fabric of our society as this misguided, zero-tolerance, draconian drug war.
“Nothing has caused as much harm to the fabric of our society as this misguided, zero-tolerance, draconian drug war.”
Perhaps, but socialism is a close second.
Researchers have speculated, however, that nondrug violence may be “intensified” by the cocaine marketplace (and specifically the crack cocaine marketplace) because systemic violence creates a setting in which violent behavior generally is deemed acceptable. Others point to the socioeconomic status of innercity neighborhoods as contributing to the extension of market violence to nondrug settings (see Section C, infra). Nonetheless, empirical studies conducted to date tend to find an association between crack cocaine involvement and the commission of other kinds of crime. This is true regardless of whether involvement is gauged by using or selling crack cocaine.
Crack and Powder Cocaine might have the same chemical makeup. However, crack produces a shorter and intensified high and is a lot cheaper. Someone on crack is going to commit a crime or solicit prostitution more often to reach that next high. This is especially evident in urban areas.
You guys just can’t face reality, can you!
“Someone on crack is going to commit a crime or solicit prostitution more often to reach that next high.”
Then prosecute them for THOSE crimes.
I totally agree Mouse! My point was that someone on crack commits a crime more often then someone on powder cocaine.
I think the laws regarding all types of drug use should be revisited
Perhaps we misunderstood you, but you seemed to be arguing in favor of stricter sentences for crack possession versus possession of powder cocaine, on the basis that the crack addict was more likely to commit or to have committed other crimes.
I guess I wasn’t clear. I am not in favor of stricter penalties, however, I disagree with Carla’s statement that criminal activity has nothing do with the type of drug one is using. The facts support my opinion!
rlewis, I’ve been reading this discussion thread, and I keep returning to one fundamental question, which is this:
How do those researchers breath in your descending colon? I assume that’s where they’re sitting around and publishing their statistics, since you keep pulling “facts” out of your ass.
Making causal assertions about the relationship between two metrics can lead to erroneous conclusions when those metrics coincidentally intersect within a particular demographic. A marker for this possibility is when you see “spillover” from one segment of the demographic to another–like, for instance, if you find that crime is higher among both people who use drugs and people who don’t use drugs within a certain racial socio-economic segment of society and then only attribute responsibility to the drug-users. It’s even more dubious when the person who first floats the facts prefaced his “reality” with the words “I bet[…].”
Gee, crack users are supposedly more likely to be black, and black people supposedly like Oprah, I bet crack use increases the likelihood that someone will like Oprah, even among people who don’t smoke crack because they’re a product of their druggie environment….
You’re an idiot anonymous! I can’t help it if you refuse to accept the fact you might be wrong on some issues, god forbid. I know you have all the answers, however! Why don’t you give me some facts almighty one!
In the 1920’s , Heroin and Cocaine were available at pharmacies without even a prescription.
People did become addicts, but fewer than today. In part because pharmacists were not handing out free samples to school children to get them started and in part because addicts were treated as fools who needed help. No one in their right mind would date an addict.
There were no pharmacists shooting each other for distribution rights in a given neighborhood, as the profit margin on the drugs was no higher than for shampoo.
Our prisons were not filled with young pharmacists.
There were young men in prison, and there was gang violence, but that was over alcohol, which was illegal under prohibition, and not over the drugs which were then legal.
Does a pattern begin to emerge?