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·         Crack Cocaine Sentencing Reform Passed in U.S. Senate » GO

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March 25, 2010

Inaugural Edition of Race & Justice News

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Race & Justice News from The Sentencing Project. Each edition will bring you news coverage of research, advocacy, and policy developments regarding race and the criminal and juvenile justice systems throughout the country. Let your friends and colleagues know that they can subscribe to Race & Justice News by signing up on our Web site. 

We also welcome your submissions!  Contact Race & Justice News to submit news about race and justice developments from your area.

Crack Cocaine Sentencing Reform Passed in U.S. Senate

In an historic moment, legislation to reform the federal mandatory sentencing laws for crack cocaine offenses was adopted by unanimous consent last week in the U.S. Senate. The adoption of the mandatory penalties in 1986 established a 100 to 1 drug quantity ratio between crack and powder cocaine. Under the penalty structure established by Congress, sale of 500 grams of powder cocaine results in a mandatory five-year prison term, but just 5 grams of crack cocaine triggers the same penalty.

The compromise bill passed by the Senate would raise the crack threshold to 28 grams, thus lowering the disparity to 18 to 1. If adopted, the legislation would result in about 3,000 defendants a year receiving an average sentence 27 months less than under the current penalty structure. The legislation now moves to the House, where the Judiciary Committee had previously voted to approve a bill equalizing the penalties between the two drugs.

Although many advocates were disappointed that the Senate did not support full equalization of penalties, the compromise bill would still represent the first reform to crack sentencing since 1986.  See Washington Post  article on the legislation.

W. Haywood Burns Institute Launches DMC Map

The W. Haywood Burns Institute recently released a comprehensive, user-friendly juvenile justice data map that provides state and county-level information on juvenile justice-involved youth. The Burns Institute is a national leader in assisting states and localities with reducing the overrepresentation of youth of color in their juvenile justice systems through targeted, data-driven technical assistance. 

The map contains a synthesized presentation of publicly available one-day counts of juveniles held in public and private residential facilities. Data go back to 1997 and are disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and offense type for each state.  Information on youth involvement in the juvenile justice system, by race, for each stage in the juvenile justice system (i.e., arrest, referral, pre-trial detention, post-conviction placement, etc.) is also available.

New Research on Race and Justice

A new study of Seattle youth finds that a sample of Black youth were more likely to be contacted or arrested by police in the 8th grade than White youth, and that initial contact/arrest substantially increased the likelihood of arrest by the 10th grade.

The researchers sought a better understanding of the extent to which environmental factors explained these differences and found that, in addition to gender (male) and income (low), youth with parents who have been arrested, have a history of school disciplinary problems, socialize with negative peers, or associate in groups with deviant adults are more likely to have police involvement. The authors say these factors help explain the racial differences in police contact and arrest.

Crutchfield, R., Skinner, M., Haggerty, K., McGlynn, A., and Catalano, R. (2009). Racial Disparities in Early Criminal Justice Involvement. Race and Social Problems 1(1): 218-230.

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