" (Vagins and McCurdy, 2006) Additionally stated by Vagins and McCurdy is: "In 2000 there were more African-American men in prison and jails than there were in higher education, leading scholars to conclude that our crime policies are a major contributor to the disruption of the African-American family. The effects of mandatory minimums not only contribute to these disproportionately higher incarceration rates, but also separate fathers from families, separate mothers with sentences for minor possession crimes from their children, create massive disenfranchisement of those with felony convictions, and prohibit previously incarcerated people from receiving some social services for the betterment of their families. In short, this policy is a failed policy in that the goal of this law was to target high-level drug traffickers but in reality, mandatory penalties for crack cocaine offenses "apply most often to offenders who are low-level participants in the drug trade." (Vagins and McCurdy, 2006) Sentencing Commission data has revealed that "73% of crack defendants have only low-level involvement in drug activity, such as street-level dealers, couriers, or lookouts." (Vagins and McCurdy, 2006)
II. CURRENT PROBLEM
The current problem at issue is the perceived 'right' of the Judge presiding over crack offense case sentencing to depart from mandatory minimum sentencing on crack cocaine offenses. This issue is presently before the U.S. Supreme Court. The work of Schwartzol (2006) entitled: "Rocks and Powder: Will Congress Listen to the Courts and Fix Drug Sentencing?" states that: "In federal court, crack offenses generate sentences 100 times greater than comparable powder-cocaine crimes. In other words, while it takes 500 grams of cocaine to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, 5 grams of crack earns the same punishment. Federal judges have long blasted the 100-to-1 ratio for punishing street-corner crack peddlers more harshly than major powder traffickers. But the biggest judicial gripe has been that the disproportionate penalties treat African-Americans unfairly. Blacks account for 80 to 90% of defendants convicted of crack offenses; whites and Hispanics for more than 70% of powder offenders. In 1992, one federal appellate judge said that the 100-to-1 ratio "makes the war on drugs look like a 'war on minorities.' " (Schwartzol, 2006) However, in 2005 the Supreme Court's ruling on sentencing in the case United States v. Booker states findings that: "mandatory sentencing guidelines violate a defendant's constitutional right to a jury trial (by requiring courts to assign a sentence based on facts found by judges, after the jury has issued a conviction). The federal sentencing guidelines, mandatory since they went into effect in 1987, became merely "advisory." Many trial judges saw Booker as authorization to renew the attack on the 100-to-1 ratio because of its impact on black defendants. One judge in Wisconsin reduced a 10-year recommended crack sentence to 18 months. Another judge pointed out that the penalty scheme "leads to, at the very least, a perception that the crack/powder disparity is racially-motivated" and knocked down a crack offender's sentence to 10 years, from 16 to 20. In the year and a half since Booker, about two dozen district courts have issued sentences below the ranges in the sentencing guidelines at least in part because the crack penalties were too harsh. But three appellate courts around the country have refused to go along. They have thrown out the reduced sentences for crack offenders on the grounds that Booker allows courts to take into account the specifics of each case at sentencing, not to disregard a penalty because it has statistically pernicious effects. Other appellate courts may see the matter differently, and eventually, the Supreme Court may weigh in. But for the time being, the maneuvering room eagerly claimed by many district courts may be disappearing. This is why the senators' new bill to remake the sentencing ratio is so remarkable. Some members of Congress are heeding the trial judges' call -- and they're proposing to make some sentences more lenient, hardly the usual congressional course." (Schwartzol, 2006) Congress did make a major change in sentencing law which was a "far reaching provision in the form of an attachment to a bill targeting child exploitation" (Schwartzol, 2006) that makes if much more difficult for judge to sentence beneath the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and makes it much easier for a win on appeal by the government in appeal of sentencing decisions. It was the conception of the Reagan administration that existing was an unrelenting and growing...
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