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CRACK VS COCAINE SENTENCING CRACK
Backroom negotiations produced a compromise of 18-to-1, a ratio that critics say bears no relationship to science or the interests of justice.Įric Sterling was legal counsel to the House Subcommittee on Crime in 1986 that helped craft the federal law that singled out crack offenders for the most severe sentences. crack cocaine sentencing disparity but they stopped well short of treating the two drugs the same. In 2010, lawmakers repealed the 100-to-1 powder cocaine vs. Recently the momentum has begun to change. Politicians, ever fearful of the dreaded “soft on crime” label, largely left the most draconian drug laws of the crack era on the books. Non-violent drug offenders spent years behind bars and reemerged only to struggle to find work and be barred in many states from living in public housing and voting in elections, experts say. Policymakers have long known about the disproportionate impact of these policies on black Americans, but little has been done.įor years, outside advocacy groups, government commissions and even federal judges have sounded the alarm on drug policies that disproportionately harm blacks and other minority groups, but little has been done. The opioid crisis has hastened the rise of sentencing alternatives that divert drug offenders away from prison. More than 3,000 drug courts have sprung up across the county since 1989 that allow those convicted of drug crimes access to treatment through the criminal justice system.īut racial disparities, while decreasing in recent years, remain stubbornly high. In 21 states, the rate of black drug arrests for cocaine and narcotics was still triple the rate for whites in 2016. Department of Health and Human Services, funding mostly earmarked for research, treatment and prevention rather than prisons and police crackdowns.ĭespite the widespread damage wrought by the opioid epidemic, police made nearly four times more arrests for cocaine offenses compared to narcotics like heroin in 2016, the most recent year for which FBI arrest data are available. Three-quarters of the $7.4 billion Congress allotted in 2018 to fight the opioid epidemic went to the U.S.
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Advocates of drug policy and criminal justice reform say it’s a step in the right direction, but many point to the pervasiveness of opioids in white communities as a key reason for the shift in thinking. The heroin and prescription opioid crisis has been treated more like a public health issue than a crime and public safety threat. Despite the more compassionate view of drug addiction today, racial inequities in drug arrests and sentencings persist. Among them were districts that encompass major cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis and Houston. Nineteen of the 94 districts that comprise the federal court system, excluding Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, didn’t send a single white defendant to federal prison on crack charges from 1991 through 1995. Scene of the 1967 riots, the neighborhood was in dire condition when crack hit in the late 1980s. Springwood Avenue in Newark shown in 1986. Narcotics is a class of drugs that includes heroin and other opioids. In cities and towns across the country, it was black people who were disproportionately taken into custody and sent to prison. For cocaine and narcotic offenses, the annual rate of drug arrests for blacks between 19 was at least twice the rate of whites. By 1989, that number had more than doubled to 1.1 million, according to a Network analysis of FBI arrest data. At the start of the decade, police made just over a half million total drug arrests nationwide. The laws enacted in the 1980s had an immediate impact on the ground. Policies enacted in the 1980s and '90s led to a soaring number of black people arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses. While blacks used crack at slightly higher rates, most crack users were white or Hispanic, according to federal drug use surveys. Crack brought alarming acts of violence to some communities, but the crisis was relatively short lived and much less deadly than other addiction epidemics. Delaware lawmakers even broached bringing back the whipping post to deter drug crime.īut even at the time, the government knew the extent of crack use had been distorted. Fifteen states also signaled out crack offenders for more severe punishments.