THE OBAMA administration is attempting to correct the imbalance which skews drug laws against poor black men but is more lenient towards affluent white cocaine users.
When a crack cocaine epidemic fuelled a crime wave in African-American ghettos in the 1980s, Congress imposed penalties 100 times higher for the use of cheap crack cocaine than for the use of expensive powder cocaine.
As a result, the vast majority of men imprisoned for cocaine possession are black. This inequity strengthened distrust of the justice system in the African-American community.
Congress last year passed a Fair Sentencing Act which reduced the disparity between crack and powder sentences to 18 to one, but the law applies only to new convicts. The US Sentencing Commission, which advises judges on appropriate sentences, recently completed a study which concluded that 12,040 federal prison inmates would be eligible for early release if the Fair Sentencing Act were made retroactive.
Attorney general Eric Holder advocated such a step in testimony before the commission on Wednesday. “There is simply no just or logical reason why their [crack cocaine users’] punishments should be dramatically more severe than those of other cocaine offenders,” he said.
Mr Holder said the Act brought the US “closer to fulfilling its fundamental and founding promise of equal treatment under the law”, but “we have more to do”.
The attorney general qualified his support for retroactively reducing sentences by saying convicts who owned or used guns, or who had extensive criminal records, should not be eligible. This proviso would reduce the number of prisoners who could be released early from 12,000 to about 6,000.
The US government spends $26,000 (€18,000) a year for each prison inmate. The average sentence reduction would be slightly more than three years.
Police groups, prosecutors and some right-wing legislators oppose the move.
Lamar Smith, a Republican representative from Texas, accused the administration of “supporting the release of dangerous drug dealers” and said Mr Holder’s proposal “shows that they are more concerned with the wellbeing of criminals than with the safety of our communities”.
Julie Stewart, who heads a group called Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said the reduced sentences should apply to all cocaine convicts, regardless of weapons possession or past criminal records. The commission’s study showed inmates who won early release were no more likely to become repeat offenders than a control group.