Obama DOJ Supports Cocaine Sentencing Reform

Elections have (good) consequences! The Washington Post is reporting that the Department of Justice has decided to (finally) support legislation to reform the drastic inequities in sentencing for possession and trafficking of different forms of cocaine.

"Now is the time for us to reexamine federal cocaine sentencing policy, from the perspective of both fundamental fairness and safety," Breuer told the subcommittee on crime and drugs. He said the issues would be among those considered by a Justice Department panel that within six months is to develop recommendations on an array of topics related to charging, sentencing and prisoner treatment.

Bipartisan groups of lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced measures to equalize sentences, but the proposals have stalled in the past.

The sentencing inequality has come to be known as the "100 to 1" ratio, in which possession of five grams of crack, the weight of two small sugar cubes, triggers a mandatory five-year prison term, while a person carrying 500 grams of powder cocaine would receive the same sentence.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who chairs the subcommittee, noted that more than half of federal inmates are locked up for drug-related crimes, including high ratios of African American offenders. In 2007, Durbin said, 82 percent of people convicted on crack possession charges were black, and 9 percent were white. (emphasis added)

This is another good sign that the "War on Drugs" is losing saliency as a political football. In New York, the Rockefeller drug laws have recently been repealed under Governor David Paterson.