These guidelines are federal guidelines, not state guidelines. So they only apply in federal cases, which is to say they only apply in federal court, for cases brought by U.S. Attorneys.

That’s kind of only partially true. The Rockefeller drug laws enacted in NY in 1973 and upgraded to keep up with 80’s crack hysteria applied to drug convictions in state courts. Florida, California, PA all enacted similar drug-class related mandatory minimums that have proven disproportional racial impacts.

Brandon Berg wrote:

What ample evidence? Even Ampersand acknowledges that it’s not clear that the law was racist by design—IMO, the parsimonious explanation is that, like most laws, it was simply a product of popular hysteria and the “do-something” disease.

There is a case to be made that the conceptual granddaddy of this kind of sentencing - NY’s Rockefeller drug laws - were racist by design, having been put together by then NY gov Nelson R. to boost his presidential bone fides with Republican primary voters. Tough on drug crime for Republicans in 1973 has a clear racial component, especially when the claim is from a liberal Republican looking to make his bones.

The laws were originally passed because folks were scared of crack. It’s turned out not to be the superduperdangerous substance that folks feared, nor has it gotten to an insane epidemic (though in truth the extraordinary penalties may have something to do with that).

I dunno if “people” were scared of crack as much as they were scared of black crackheads, which is kind of scary squared.

Also, the devastation wrought on the black community by the triple punch of crack, HIV and Reagan was technically pretty insane. The 80s are kind of a scarred border that separates today from the civil rights era. It’s basically what allows a reasonably intelligent black writer like John Ridley to be able to write tripe like the following in this month’s Esquire:

Let me tell you something about n****rs, the oppressed minority within our minority. Always down. Always out. Always complaining that they can’t catch a break. Notoriously poor about doing for themselves. Constantly in need of a leader but unable to follow in any direction that’s navigated by hard work, self-reliance. And though they spliff and drink and procreate their way onto welfare doles and WIC lines, n****s will tell you their state of being is no fault of their own. They are not responsible for their nearly 5 percent incarceration rate and their 9.2 percent unemployment rate. Not responsible for the 11.8 percent rate at which they drop out of high school. For the 69.3 percent of births they create out of wedlock.

Now, let me tell you something about my generation of black Americans. We are the inheritors of “the Deal” forced upon the entrenched white social, political, and legal establishment when my parents’ generation won the struggle for civil rights. The Deal: We (blacks) take what is rightfully ours and you (the afore-described establishment) get citizens who will invest the same energy and dedication into raising families and working hard and being all around good people as was invested in snapping the neck of Jim Crow.

In the forty years since the Deal was brokered, since the Voting Rights Act was signed, there have been successes for blacks. But there are still too many blacks in prison, too many kids aggrandizing the thug life, and way too many African-Americans doing far too little with the opportunities others earned for them.

If we as a race could win the centuries-long war against institutionalized racism, why is it that so many of us cannot secure the advantage after decades of freedom?

That which retards us is the worst of “us,” those who disdain actual ascendancy gained by way of intellectual expansion and physical toil, who instead value the posture of an “urban,” a “street,” a “real” existence, no matter that such a culture threatens to render them extinct.

“Them” being n****rs.

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/061105_mfe_December_06_Essay_1.html

The above becomes impossible to write without the justifying context of the crack epidemic, it’s associated ills and legacy in the inner city.

Also! The crack epidemic ended not because of tough penalties imposed on dealers (that’s just cost of doing business) but because inner city youth had a front row street to the horrors of being, well, a crackhead, so use aged out. On the streets there is no lower form of life than the proverbial crackhead. The users of the drug, who were actually parents, brothers, sisters aunts cousins and so on, were more fearsomely instructive than any mandatory minimum-wielding prosecutor ever was. From a 1999 National Institute of Justice study:

Recent analyses of cocaine use variation by age have revealed two
interesting findings. First, older cohorts generally tested positive for
cocaine at much higher rates than their younger cohort counterparts
(Golub and Johnson, 1997; NIJ, 1998). This finding suggests that younger
users are not being recruited into cocaine use at rates high enough to
replace current older users. Thus, as the current oldest cohorts age out,
many communities can expect to witness overall declines in cocaine use.
Moreover, because many current users in the oldest cohorts are crack
users, as opposed to powder cocaine users, the declines can be expected to
be sharpest in crack cocaine use.

http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles1/175657.txt

If you were to map that above referenced decline in crack use to incarceration rates, I imagine you would find them to be uncorrelated, meaning criminal penalties don’t get credit for declining use. Crack use has gone down while incarceration rates have held relatively steady.

In all truth, I think the public perception of crack was that it was INSANELY more dangerous than cocaine.

It’s hard to put this in proper context without assessing the role of race in shaping this kind of perception. Is it a coincidence that the drug used by the era’s most oppressed racial class is perceived as INSANELY more dangerous than anything else? Is it an accident that, criminal sentencing is seen as the way to handle a public health epidemic in that same community?

Jake Squid Writes:
November 15th, 2006 at 10:56 pm

Brandon,

Ask yourself, “Why the hysteria over crack that was lacking for powder cocaine when powder was popular in the 70’s? What was the difference between the two forms of the drug? Were there any differences between the popular view of who the users of the two different forms were?”

In all truth, I think the public perception of crack was that it was INSANELY more dangerous than cocaine.

Doesn’t anyone else remember hearing that people were addicted after one hit, for example? I swear that I must have heard that a gazillion times–and I believed it–though I now know some folks who have tried one or two hits of crack without addiction. There was a huge scare about the method of using the drug (inhalation) and the scientists and drug folks were speculating like hell on how bad it would be.

Also, because crack base and the method of use vastly enhance bioavilability over plain cocaine, you can get more high from a given $$$ value of cocaine (enhancing addiction), or so it was believed back then.

Coke was also usually a “rich man’s high” because it was so expensive. That tended to limit the expansion into an epidemic: it’s part of why, now, you’re much less likely to find a coke addict than a crack addict on the street.

Ask yourself, “Why the hysteria over crack that was lacking for powder cocaine when powder was popular in the 70’s? What was the difference between the two forms of the drug? Were there any differences between the popular view of who the users of the two different forms were?” for a start. If you really want to talk about why I and many others believe there is ample evidence that this is a law/rule influenced/motivated by societal racism, this is the place to start. There is a difference between a law made by overt racists and a law made by people strongly influenced by the racism that is part of their community (see point the secondly).

Secondly, just because the law wasn’t “racist by design” - by which I take it you mean that the framers of the law didn’t make it with overt racist intent - doesn’t mean that the creation of the law wasn’t strongly influenced by a societally and deeply ingrained racism.

(Its a poorly structured comment, but I’m exhausted. Hopefully I was understandable. Sorry about that.)

And once a law like this gets passed, trying to roll it back is political suicide. Not one Congressman in ten is brave or foolish enough to go on record as being soft on crack. So it stays. Democracy in action.

No. The debate is over whether or not, in this case, disparate sentencing was motivated by a racism that is deeply ingrained in the US. I believe that there is ample evidence that it was.

Still, working in a u.s. attorney’s office (most major drug crimes are federally prosecuted) there was a general feel that this was off. And those are, obviously, some of the more pro-conviction folks out there.

You may not realize this, but it is even worse that you summarize. Unless there’s been a significant change in the guidelines since I last looked, many defendants could be (and were) convicted for possession of crack for things which weren’t crack. E.g. (operating from memory here):
-if you had a substance which was partially cocaine base (crack) and partially not, there was no provision to look at percentages. One kilo of crack, uncut, would get you penalties for one kilo. Take that same kilo and cut it 100 times, and you get the penalties for 100 kilos, even though the crack amount remains the same. This sort of makes sense when you think of cutting, but makes less sense for people who are busted doing production, because they often had huge quantities of stuff, of which only a tiny portion was crack.

-i believe some precursor chemicals could also be counted as crack. which raised sentences considerably,

That said, there is an important thing you didn’t mention.

These guidelines are federal guidelines, not state guidelines. So they only apply in federal cases, which is to say they only apply in federal court, for cases brought by U.S. Attorneys.

The part that you didn’t mention is that U.S. Attorneys generally don’t bother with small time criminals, except in a few cases: 1) felons on probation, and 2) low ranking gang members, as a method of squeezing them for information. Generally if it was less than a kilo they would let the state handle it.

This reduces some of the fundamental unfairness of the 100:1 ratio. At least for me. See, I’m most concerned that the casual user who has, say, 10-50 grams of coke or crack, gets treated insanely badly depending on whether it’s coke or crack.

But once someone gets busted with a kilo, or 10 kilos, or 250 kilos, I’m honestly much less concerned about the length of their sentence. I don’t like drug dealers; I don’t like either crack or coke, and so long as due process is followed during their trial I’m happy to lock them up for a while.

Similarly, in order for probation to work well, and in order for the state to support probation (which I think is a good thing) it needs to be enforced strictly. I have little problem with convicting folks who violate probation.

Finally: I think the racist argument was pretty apposite when the laws were first passed. (You may not know that this issue was actually appealed to the supreme court; the state won). But at THIS POINT, where the effect of the laws and the disparate treatment for crack and coke are widely known among criminals, I have less sympathy. If someone knows the penalties and begins to use/deal with that in mind, they’re taking a risk on themselves. You can’t blame the law.