By The Editors

Efforts to equalize federal sentencing guidelines for offenses involving crack and powder cocaine gained significant momentum in Washington last week.

In Congress, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved legislation eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for possession of small amounts of crack cocaine. Similar legislation is being drafted in the Senate for the Senate Judiciary Committee, amid widespread expectations that it, too, will be approved there.

In addition, Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. last week reiterated the Obama Administration’s support doing away with the extraordinary disparity in sentences required for offenses involving the two forms of cocaine.

The current federal sentencing guidelines, enacted during the height of the “drug scare” a quarter century ago, mandate a 100-to-1 ratio penalizing those convicted of offenses involving crack cocaine compared to those convicted of offenses involving powder cocaine. For example, a first-time conviction for possessing five grams of crack – which the Washington Post noted in an editorial has the weight of two pennies – automatically brings a mandatory five-year sentence.

A huge disparity soon arose in who was being arrested and convicted for cocaine use because crack cocaine, the cheaper form of cocaine, was marketed chiefly in poor black communities, where local policies and federal law agencies concentrated their enforcement efforts. As a result, black Americans make up 14 percent of illegal drug users – but more than 80 percent of those convicted of a federal crack cocaine.

The disparity has for years fueled heated denunciations of the sentencing guidelines from blacks and prison reform advocates, and persistent legislative efforts to revise them. Much of that effort has been led by members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The chief sponsor of the House bill approved last week by the Judiciary subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security was the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D.-Va.

Holder, speaking at the conference of the National Black Prosecutors Association, in Memphis, Tenn., said that “Although some may seek to impose the ‘soft-on-crime’ label on anyone who speaks the truth about this issue, we all know that this egregious difference in punishment is simply wrong. In my career as a prosecutor and as a judge, I saw too often the cost borne by the community when promising, capable young people sacrificed years of their futures for non-violent offenses.” Holder added that the federal agency “would never back down from its duty to protect our citizens and our neighborhoods from drugs, or the violence that all too often accompanies the drug trade. But we must discharge this duty in a way that protects our communities as well as the public’s confidence in the justice system.”