Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

"The Moral Urgency of Crack Retroactivity"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this commentary by Julie Stewart, the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which ran yesterday at The Huffington Post.  Here is how it begins: On August 3, 2010, the nation's first African-American president signed into law a bill to reform what many considered the most racially discriminatory sentencing policy in federal law.  The old policy required dramatically more severe penalties for crimes involving crack cocaine than for offenses involving powder cocaine.  The president and Congress deserve credit for working together to lower crack penalties.  Yet, in a cruel irony, they failed to provide any relief to the very prisoners whose unnecessarily harsh sentences they had pointed to as the impetus for reform...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 18, 2011 (boomark / email).