Texas Tough

In the next few weeks, President Obama is expected to sign breakthrough legislation minimizing the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine. The reforms are long overdue, but take only half a step toward racial justice. In this op-ed, I explain why racist crack laws are only part of the problem and why the President and his Democratic majority need to work hard on criminal justice while there’s still time.

From The Root: Nothing symbolizes the conflicted state of U.S. race relations more than the tortured odyssey of crack cocaine. Federal sentencing enhancements for the drug, which we now know is pharmacologically indistinguishable from powder cocaine, date to the Reagan administration. They have had an astonishingly injurious impact.

Although surveys show that most users of cocaine, in all its forms, are white, African Americans and Latinos account for 96 percent of crack convictions, most of them low-level street dealers. Because the mandatory penalties are so harsh–possession of 5 grams yields a minimum sentence of five years–African Americans with crack raps are now serving as much time in federal prison as whites convicted of violent offenses. Federal District Judge Robert Sweet calls it “Jim Crow justice.” …More

I’m somewhat dubious of the treatment protocol championed here, but it’s a thoughtful piece and includes a useful collection of statistics on the severity of racial disparity in the prison system. America’s Prisons: Is There Hope? – The New York Review of Books.