While we wait for the United States Senate to pass the Equal Act, effectively and finally eliminating the sentencing disparity between two forms of cocaine, U.S. Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland outlined additional policies for federal prosecutors to pursue equalizing charges, pleas, and sentencing in those drug cases.
"The Justice Department supports elimination of the crack-to-powder sentencing disparity and has testified before Congress in support of the Equal Act … which would remove that disparity," the memo states, in part, noting that the disparity is unscientific and that sentences have led to racial disparities. From the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that created mandatory minimum sentences and established the 100-to-1 ratio that punished crack cocaine offenses more severely; to the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act that reduced that ratio to 18:1; to the retroactive sentence reductions in the 2018 First Step Act, for people initially convicted under the 1986 law, justice has been shamefully slow. Until the Senate passes the Equal Act, the Justice Department is applying this policy "with particular force in drug cases … where the mandatory minimum sentences based on drug type and quantity have resulted in disproportionately severe sentences for certain defendants and perceived and actual racial disparities in the criminal justice system."
To discuss their own research and professional work in the area of drug policy and, specifically, the crack-versus-powder cocaine disparities, David Mares, Mark Osler and Doris Marie Provine took some time to talk about the significance of Garland's latest instructions, the history of the anti-drug legislation that led to these racial disparities, and how we might possibly repair the harm done to the communities that suffered under these policies. Mares is a distinguished professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego and author of "Drug Wars and Coffeehouses: The Political Economy of the International Drug Trade" about drug policy around the world; Osler is a former federal prosecutor and current law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, where he teaches about sentencing and clemency; and Provine is professor emeritus of justice and social inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University, and the author of "Unequal Under Law: Race and the War on Drugs." (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. .)
