This is an edited excerpt of a Los Angeles Times editorial, which was published Thursday.
AMERICA's war on drugs has filled federal prisons to bursting. More than 20 percent of federal inmates are low-level and first-time drug offenders, most with no history of violence.
Drug crimes should certainly be punished, but Congress has gone way overboard with its harsh and inequitable drug-sentence regimes.
Now it stands in danger of doing even more damage. Federal law imposes mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug crimes, leaving no room for judicial discretion and no possibility of parole. The disparities built into these sentencing laws have left the perception of racial discrimination in their application.
For example, anyone convicted of possessing 500 grams of powder cocaine draws a mandatory five-year prison term.
For offenders found with crack cocaine, a different form of the drug but with the same active ingredients, possession of just five grams draws the mandatory five-year-minimum sentence.
This 100-to-1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine sprang from congressional concern about the violence associated with the crack trade.
In practice, however, because crack has been more prevalent in minority communities, 96 percent of those prosecuted for crack possession are black or Latino.
This appearance of racial disparity undermines the credibility of the justice system. Modest efforts over the years to eliminate or reduce the disparity by raising the amount of crack that subjects an offender to the harsh, five-year-minimum sentence have failed.
Now comes Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican, with an absurd piece of legislation that would cut the 100-to-1 disparity to 10 to 1 by reducing the amount of powder cocaine necessary to trigger the mandatory minimum sentence from 500 to 50 grams.
The result would sweep even more low-level drug offenders into prison, suck in more tax dollars to house them and leave even less money for drug treatment.
Low-level crack felons already serve an average of 10 years and six months behind bars, a sentence 59 percent longer than that meted out to convicted rapists and only 18 percent shorter than that served by the average convicted murderer.
Recently, the Senate narrowly voted to attach Mr. Hatch's measure to the Bankruptcy Reform Act, which is still pending in Congress.
Wiser measures, stalled in the House, would equalize the disparity by raising the amount of crack rather than cutting the amount of powder that triggers the five-year minimum and would give back to judges some of the sentencing discretion they need to make the punishment fit the crime.
Congress should have the political courage to deal with this inequity in a fair and humanitarian way.
