By The Editors

A federal commission’s approval of new sentencing guidelines could result in significantly reduced sentences for as many as 12,000 federal inmates now serving time for crack-cocaine offenses.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously Thursday to allow federal judges to retroactively apply the amendment to federal sentencing guidelines Congress enacted last year. Those amendments narrowed the sharp disparity between the lengthier sentences required to be given to individuals convicted of crack-cocaine offenses compared to those required for conviction of offenses involved powdered cocaine.

The federal commission’s revised guidelines –  which don’t apply to inmates in state prisons convicted of drug offenses under state crack-cocaine laws     — come in response to  a measure Congress enacted last year which cut the disparity in federal sentences between crack-cocaine and powder-cocaine offenses mandated by the original 1986 federal law. Under that law.

Under that law’s draconian terms, an individual convicted of crack possession got the same mandatory prison sentence as someone with 100 times the amount of powdered cocaine. In other words, five grams of crack, about the weight of five packets of Sweet ‘N’ Low, brought a mandatory five years behind bars. But it took 500 grams of powdered cocaine to get the same sentence. Last year Congress reduced that disparity from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1. Now, possession of 28 grams of crack is punishable by five years in prison.

Critics of the disparity, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), have long charged that the different sentencing guidelines have had a powerful racially discriminatory impact because the crack form of cocaine was overwhelmingly used  and sold by African-American users and drug dealers, while the powered form was overwhelmingly used and sold by white users and drug dealers.

Crack-cocaine inmates make up nearly 6 percent of the 200,000 or so federal prisoners. About 85 percent of the federal inmates expected to benefit from the new guidelines are African-American.

U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris, the Chair of the Commission, said in a statement that “Today’s action by the Commission ensures that the longstanding injustice recognized by Congress is remedied, and that federal crack cocaine offenders who meet certain criteria established by the Commission and considered by the courts may have their sentences reduced to a level consistent with the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.”

Although some inmates serving time for crack-cocaine offenses could be released from prison as early as November, the Commission’s action doesn’t mean that significant numbers of them will be immediately, or even quickly, released, given the long sentences these inmates are serving.

A federal judge will decide, based on the new guidelines and such other criteria as whether the inmate used a weapon during the commission of their crime or has an extensive criminal record, whether an inmate’s sentence should be reduced. Prosecutors will also be allowed to speak at such hearings.

Jeffrey Robinson, Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, praised the Commission’s action. However, he added that the Congress “needs to do more to finally resolve the issue. They should approve a full legislative retroactivity regarding sentences meted out for crack-cocaine offenses, and they should establish a one-to-one relationship in the sentences that apply to those convicted of crack-cocaine and powder-cocaine offenses.”

Commission data show that under the existing so-called retroactivity provision that was applied to federal crack-cocaine inmates in early 2008, federal judges have approved 16,433 – just 64 percent – of the 25,515 motions inmates filed for reduced sentences.

A Sentencing Commission study done to help its members decide on the guidelines found that of motions for sentence reduction that were denied, more than 7,600 were from inmates who were simply legally ineligible to apply. Only about 600 were denied a sentence reduction because of their pattern of misbehavior either before they went to prison or while in prison.

Commission officials said the average reduction of an inmate’s sentence is just over 3 years. That means that, if an inmate is successful in having his or her sentence reduced, many will still have 10 years of incarceration left to serve.

“The Commission also sought to respond to concerns expressed during last year’s debate over the Congressional act that releasing inmates before they served their full sentences would lead to their committing more crimes once beyond the prison walls. Commission staff studied the recidivism rate of those offenders who received a reduced sentence and release as a result of the 2007 amendment and  compared to a similarly situated group of federal crack cocaine offenders who had served their normal term of imprisonment: In a document also released Thursday, they say no statistically significant difference in recidivism rates between the two groups of offenders was found.