Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Criminal Law

: The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

NY Times Edititorial: Toward Drug Case Justice

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

February 9, 2008 Editorial, NY Times Toward Drug Case Justice Attorney General Michael Mukasey tried to scare the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday into blocking a responsible plan by the United States Sentencing Commission to address the gross disparity in penalties for possession or sale of crack cocaine and those for powder cocaine offenses. His alarm is unwarranted. Under current federal law, people convicted of selling 5 grams of crack ? most often used in impoverished, minority areas ? face the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as offenders caught selling 500 grams of the powdered cocaine popular with more upscale users. This 100-to-1 rule is a legacy of the 1980s, when it was erroneously believed that crack was much more dangerous than the chemically identical powder...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on February 09, 2008 (boomark / email).