ACLU Supporter –

The racist disparities in America's unjust crack cocaine sentencing laws have gone on for decades. As has unfair and excessively long prison sentences, period. It's past time we end these practices for good.

Here's why – and how – our country should take action:

First, let's be clear that crack and powder cocaine are two forms of the same substance. Yet for over 35 years, people have faced extremely harsher punishment for crack offenses.

Up until 2010, five grams of crack cocaine carried the same mandatory prison sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine. That is a 100-to-1 sentencing disparity. And while the work of advocates, including ACLU activists like yourself, have led to progress – it's still 18-to-1 today.

Because of this, close to 9,000 people are now imprisoned under the racially unjust disparities, and 1,500 new sentences are issued to people every year. At the same time, other federal laws continue to require cruel and unnecessarily longer prison sentences across the board.

It's no coincidence that all of this has disproportionately devastated communities of color and Black families in particular – as the overwhelming majority of people locked away and forced into our prison systems continue to be Black.

But there are two critical pieces of legislation in Congress right now that could eliminate these racial disparities and ensure everyone is sentenced under the same laws – the First Step Implementation Act (FSIA) and EQUAL Act. We must push the Senate to move quickly:

Send a message to your senators now and urge them to pass these bills immediately.

ACLU Supporter, both the FSIA and EQUAL Act are common-sense bills with bipartisan support:

• The FSIA allows reduced mandatory minimums to be applied retroactively, provides judges with additional discretion to sentence below mandatory minimums in certain cases, and more. Recent changes enacted in the First Step Act of 2018 – which lowered sentences for certain instances – are not currently being applied to everyone. The FSIA addresses this issue by applying its changes for so many people still incarcerated under these old, unjust laws.
• The EQUAL Act directly addresses the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine – and, significantly, applies reforms retroactively.

If we can push the Senate to take action on these two bills, then it could mean thousands of people with reduced sentences and a long-overdue end to draconian sentencing laws.

Please, send a message to your senators today.

Thanks for taking action,

Aamra Ahmad
Pronouns: She, her, hers
Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU