We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
SAFER AMERICA PLAN BACKS EQUAL ACT, BUT IS IT ENOUGH?
President Biden rolled out a “Safer America Plan” last week, a proposal to address public concern about crime rates that is probably intended to blunt the issue before November’s midterm elections.
The Plan represents the President’s hopes and not a firm legislative proposal. But amid the $35 billion proposal to support law enforcement, gun control, and crime prevention, the Plan “calls on Congress to end once and for all the racially discriminatory sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses — as President Biden first advocated in 2007 — and make that change fully retroactive.”
This, of course, is the EQUAL Act (S.79).
EQUAL would provide immediate sentencing relief to an estimated 10,000 inmates – more than 90% of whom are black – currently serving time in federal prison pursuant to the crack/powder disparity, according to the White House.
President Biden’s backing of the EQUAL Act is not surprising, but in the wake of a big Democrat win in Congress last week on the Inflation Reduction Act, the Senate may have the energy to tackle EQUAL. It will have to be after the August recess, and that brings it within 60 days of the November election. It still looks likely nothing will happen on EQUAL until after the November 8th midterm election.
In an August 1st letter to Congress, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops pressed for passage of EQUAL. “We cannot ignore the racial impact of current federal cocaine sentences when Blacks are more than three times as likely to be convicted for crack cocaine trafficking as for powder cocaine trafficking,” Bishops Paul S. Coakley and Shelton J. Fabre wrote.
An amendment to add the EQUAL Act to the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4350) passed the House of Representatives on July 19 with bipartisan support. But the likelihood that the provision will survive Senate passage of the NDAA is low: Unrelated amendments are routinely attached to NDAAs but are often negotiated out in the process of reconciling House and Senate versions of the bill.
The Catholic News Agency report on the bishops’ letter suggests that despite broad support, EQUAL’s future may be bleak:
The EQUAL Act has an uncertain future in the Senate. Since it has 11 Republican co-sponsors, it could pass as a stand-alone bill. However, the ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, has his own bill to address disparities in drug sentencing. His legislation would reduce but not eliminate the disparity.
White House, Safer America Plan (August 1, 2022)
Catholic News Agency, Bishops urge passage of bill that would give same sentences to crack and powder cocaine offenders (August 11, 2022)
– Thomas L. Root