The Human Rights Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a shared ministry of Disciples Home Missions and the Disciples Center for Public Witness, applauds President Obama’s decision announced today to commute the unfair and harsh sentences of eight federal inmates who were convicted of crack cocaine offenses. It is a bold and symbolic step towards restoring fairness to our nation’s broken criminal justice system.
The eight individuals who will have their sentences commuted were convicted under laws which created a 100-to-1 disparity in the mandatory minimum sentences for crack and powder cocaine offences. These laws are now widely recognized as harsh and unjust, and have created extreme racially disparities in practice. African Americans made up about 30% of crack users but 82% of those convicted for federal crack offenses. Even the judges who sentenced many of these eight individuals lamented that they did not have the ability to issue a more proportional punishment.
Holding these eight individuals in prison keeps them away from their families and communities, costs taxpayers thousands of dollars at no benefit to public safety, and undermines public faith in the criminal justice system. The President’s decision also underscores the need for legislation that repairs these unjust sentences, and in fact, an important piece of bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress, the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2013, does exactly that.
