Crack Law: Not only Cruel and Racist, But Scientifically Wrong

For years, those concerned with fairness in America have been distressed by the alarming racial disparities seen in the criminal justice system. Currently, one in eight young African American men are under criminal justice supervision--either in prison, on parole or on probation--and black men serve almost as much time in prison for nonviolent drug offenses (58.7 months) as whites do for violent crimes (61.7 months).

One major cause of these disparities is a profoundly stupid mandatory federal sentencing scheme instituted in the 1980's during the national panic over crack cocaine. Under these laws, possession or sale of crack results in a mandatory sentence 100 times greater than that someone would receive for selling or possessing the same amount of powder cocaine.

Now, our "bipartisan" Senate has come up with a "compromise" to reduce the disparity: instead of 100 times greater, the sentences for crack under the new law will be only 20 times longer. As Ta-Nehisi Coates put it on the Atlantic, the new disparity is only "one fifth as racist as it used to be."

What's really idiotic is that if you wanted to demonize the more dangerous drug with harsher penalties, powder is the one you should go after. The assumption in the law is that powder is "safer" because it is snorted, rather than smoked.

But the fact is that the most deadly way to use cocaine is to inject it--something that is chemically impossible with crack unless you first convert it into powder. The "high" from injecting is also every bit as intense as the crack high.

Moreover, injecting powder cocaine puts one at higher risk of overdose and carries even greater risk of spreading HIV than smoking crack does. So, if the purpose of longer sentences is to "send a message" about risk, even that isn't accomplished by these absurd laws.

What they accomplish instead is the ongoing destruction of black families and communities--failing to prevent drug use, dealing or addiction, tearing parents and children apart and costing everyone a fortune.

Is it better for the disparity to become 20 to 1 rather than 100 to 1? Sure. But what would save families, communities and money would be to scrap mandatory sentencing entirely and spend the money formerly used for incarceration on treatment and education.

 

 

 

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maiasz

Comments

[PslashS]

02:01 PM on 03/12/2010

First off, to say this is a racist law is completely and utterly ridiculous. Just because black people use the drug and there is a harsh penalty for it, doesn't classify as racists in the least bit. If it were the other way where there is not strict punishments for crack cocaine, people would be bitching about how it is racist that we let them use it without giving strict punishments to discourage its use. People should really be more accountable for themselves instead of declaring things racist to make punishments less severe. If you don't want to get busted for it, don't do it- bottom line. Don't try to put your problems on someone else.

[hBoone]

01:24 PM on 03/12/2010

I thought about what to write in a response to this...and thought about it some more as i sit here waiting for parole to "pick me up". We as criminals, addicts do these things knowing the end game for our actions. I am 54, white and live in we make money on prisoners America (texas) and have served about ten years flat on my twenty year sentence but only have 10 months left on the whole twenty. I am what I am, I choose this life style over and over. And over family, friends, freedom what more can I say or do? This last 10 months is what I WILL do.

[RightWingMarine]

12:19 PM on 03/12/2010

spend the money on treatment and education. It's the education part that I've never understood, are there people out there that are unaware that crack is bad for them?

Perhaps crack has the stiffer penalities because it is cheaper than powder cocaine. This low price makes the drug available to more people and thus our lawmakers (feeling that we can't take care of ourselves) legislate morality and ban the drug and add a stiff penalty to the one that the most people can afford. Powder has a lower sentence because it is expensive and fewer people can afford it and thus fewer people violate the lawmakers sense of morals and thus is less of a perceived problem.

To believe that crack has a higher sentence solely because of racism is to believe that our elected leaders conspired in secret to find a substance that most would define as harmful but is used disproportionally more by blacks vs whites. It seems more reasonable to believe that our lawmakers having no thoughts of their own saw what was sensationalized on the news and figured this would be an easy way to get on TV and fight against something everyone was already against.

[Bolan]

12:16 PM on 03/12/2010

It took the death of a single promising basketball player to capture Congressional attention. In 1986, University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose the night he was drafted in the first round by the Boston Celtics. Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. Tip O’Neill heard from their constituents in Massachusetts, who were, perhaps, more upset about the loss of a top draft pick than a young athlete’s loss of life.

In response, Kennedy and O’Neill promoted a new formula to “get tough on crack.” The formula dictated that possession of one gram of crack would be punished with the same prison time as 100 grams of powder cocaine. “Without hearings or expert analysis, this hastily created ratio drove many of the disastrous and ineffective policies about crack cocaine that followed. By Dr Osler
Are you saying that Ted and Tip were the two raciest that started this whole thing?