Release of 19,500 Crack Offenders Considered

Sentencing Commission could retroactively apply new sentencing guidelines.

ByABC News
February 12, 2009, 3:02 PM

Nov. 13, 2007— -- The U.S. Sentencing Commission heard testimony Tuesday on whether it should reduce the prison sentences of an estimated 19,500 people currently incarcerated for crack cocaine offenses.

In May, the commission proposed reducing crack cocaine sentences by an average of 27 months. The amendment affects individuals convicted after Nov. 1, but now the commission is considering making the rule retroactive for previously sentenced offenders.

According to an analysis by the Sentencing Project, a group in favor of retroactively applying the decision, a majority of the people affected by the new policy have been sentenced since 1995.

Congress passed increased penalties on crack cocaine over powder cocaine in 1986 as the crack epidemic led to increased violence and addiction in U.S. cities. The mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine offenses were the same as individuals convicted of possessing 100 times as much powdered cocaine.

There is a racial disparity in the federal crack statues, Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, noted in a statement to the commission.

"Currently, more than 80 percent of the people prosecuted under the federal statues are black. Whether or not this is evidence of bias in policy or practice it clearly demonstrates that a retroactive change would disproportionately benefit African-Americans," Mauer stated.

The Justice Department has strongly opposed the retroactive sentence reduction claiming, that it would pose a public safety risk.

"The commission, to our knowledge, has never before made an amendment retroactive that would have the sweeping impact of these proposed amendments," Alice Fisher, an assistant attorney general, wrote in a letter to the commission earlier this month.

"Furthermore," Fisher's letter continued, "the unexpected release of 20,000 prisoners ... who have comparatively high recidivism rates, would jeopardize community safety and threatens to unravel the success we have achieved in removing violent crack offenders from high crime neighborhoods."