Missouri’s fiscal problems have forced lawmakers to make difficult funding choices as they map out the state’s budget plan for 2012. The House budget bill cut funding to colleges and universities by 7 percent and provides no increases for elementary and secondary education. These decisions will hurt our schools and force children to take a back seat because of spending priorities elsewhere in the budget, most notably our prison system.
As Missouri’s prison system grows so does the expense of incarceration. We spend about $16,000 per prisoner per year, and our prison population is expected to increase. There is room to cut.
In Missouri, low-level and nonviolent crack cocaine offenses receive uniquely harsh sentences that are costly and ineffective in curbing drug abuse. Reducing those unfair sentences to a level proportionate to the crime would free up resources that could be better used educating our youth without impacting public safety.
Missouri is among 13 states with a sentencing disparity between powder cocaine and crack cocaine. Missouri maintains a 75-to-1 quantity disparity between the two drugs that are pharmacologically the same. While an offense involving powder cocaine only qualifies for a mandatory minimum sentence of five years when selling 150 grams of the drug, for crack cocaine a first-time offense involving as little as two grams of the drug subjects a defendant to the same mandatory five-year penalty.
The law results in an ineffective use of scarce public resources – law enforcement, courts, and prisons – that would be better deployed to handle cases involving genuinely high-level offenders. Many times individuals caught possessing small quantities of drugs are drug users or street sellers supporting a habit. Missouri requires judges to sentence these types of offenders, who may possess a quantity of crack cocaine weighing as little as a sugar packet, to an excessive mandatory sentence, even for a first-time offense.
Moreover, we know from data analysis conducted in other states and at the federal level that cocaine sentencing disparities produce unfair racial disparities in prison admissions. For example, The Sentencing Project found that in Iowa and Ohio African Americans comprised 75 percent or more of the people incarcerated for crack cocaine offenses. While blacks report using crack cocaine at higher rates than whites, it is far lower than the 75 percent figure for prison admissions of crack offenders found in other states.
We have introduced legislation to address this problem and make sentences for low-level crack cocaine offenses fairer. House Bill 913 would reduce the current 75 to 1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine to 4 to 1 by raising quantity amounts that trigger mandatory minimum sentences for low-level crack cocaine offenses.
HB 913 has garnered bipartisan support at a time when the call for smarter sentencing has brought together conservatives and liberals across the country. Conservatives like former U.S. Attorney and head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Asa Hutchinson and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform supported reducing crack cocaine sentencing disparities at the federal level. At the state-level, in recent years
Connecticut, Iowa and South Carolina have adopted reforms to address their crack cocaine sentencing laws.
There is an urgent need to address the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential. We can no longer afford business as usual with prisons. The criminal justice system is broken, and addressing disparate sentencing practices is one way to fix it. We can free up funds for our schools by adopting fiscally responsible and bipartisan approaches to incarceration that includes reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenses.
