To the existing flood of young minority males serving draconian sentences for nonviolent, low-level crack offenses, it simply proposes to add minor powder cocaine offenders. Only low-end cocaine defendants will have their sentences changed under Abraham's proposal. The sentence for a participant in a 100-gram powder cocaine transaction will more than double, from 27 months to five years, and the Sentencing Commission's mandate will require it to make comparable increases for lesser quantities. There is no reason to raise powder sentences, other than as cover for Congress' political inability to admit error and ease low-quantity crack sentences. Powder sentences are four and a half times more severe than they were in 1970, and a Sentencing Commission survey found that neither law enforcement nor the public finds them too soft.
Nothing is done to relieve the draconian sentences for crack.
An addict convicted of simple possession will still get a mandatory five years. Playing even a minor role in the distribution of a few rocks will still get a mandatory five or ten years. And more than nine out of ten federal crack defendants will still be African-American. All that is proposed for minorities is to pile more injustice on top of injustice. The doubling of powder cocaine sentences in the name of racial equity is a sham, and the effect, if not the intent, is racist.