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GUEST: Deborah Vagins, Policy Counsel for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the ACLU

More than a dozen inmates are expected to be released this week under retroactive changes to federal sentencing guidelines for crack offenders. An additional 1,500 inmates will also be eligible to petition for immediate release. The changes were approved by the U.S. Sentencing Commission in December 2007 and were designed to close a sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenders. Although there are no major pharmacological or physiological differences between crack and powder cocaine, there is a 100 to 1 sentencing difference between the two. In other words, the sale of 5 grams of crack carries the same mandatory minimum sentence as the sale of 500 grams of powder cocaine. But 80% of crack users are black while the majority of powder cocaine offenders are white. Activists have long decried the sentencing disparity as racist. While judges are now able to deliver sentences under the new guidelines, Congress is considering two bills that seek to close the sentencing disparity even further. Hearings on federal cocaine sentencing laws took place on the 12th and 26th of February as activists lobbied for reform.

For more information, visit www.aclu.org.