PRINCETON, NJ – Undergraduate students from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ Policy Advocacy Clinic released a nonpartisan policy brief recently on the disparity between sentencing for possession of crack and powder cocaine.
There was a reported 18-to-1 sentencing disparity, with the sentence for 28 grams of crack cocaine the same as for 500 grams of powder cocaine, despite there being no pharmacological differences between the drugs, according to the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ Policy Advocacy Clinic.
For some brief context, several statistics regarding the sentencing of cocaine charges was provided by the Princeton Policy Advocacy Clinic, including the fact that between 2015 and 2023, nearly 80 percent of crack cocaine convictions were given to African Americans, while Latino populations made up 13 percent, and white individuals six percent.
The Princeton Policy Advocacy Clinics policy brief notes the vast majority of those convicted of using crack cocaine had no college education, only 15 percent had some high education experience, 46 percent had a high school degree or equivalent, and 40 percent had less than a high school degree.
Princeton Policy Advocacy Clinic added only three percent of crack cocaine convictions came from a trial, with 97 percent from plea deal sentencing, and of those sentences, 94 percent faced prison time.
Princeton Policy Advocacy Clinic stated, “the vast majority of people convicted for crack trafficking – more than 92 percent — did not hold a supervisory or leadership role.”
Forty-one of the 50 states have no sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine charges, and seven of the nine remaining states have a lower disparity ratio than what is normalized in federal law, as offered by the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ Policy Advocacy Clinic.
In this way, the study concluded, federal law is an outlier.
The Princeton undergraduates analyzed the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law (EQUAL) Act, and its potential impacts, as detailed by Tom Durso, author of an article within the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, detailing the students brief.
The Act, they said, was first introduced in 2021 and re-introduced in 2023, and would “eliminate the 18-to-1 federal sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses and authorize the resentencing of people previously convicted of crack offenses,” according to Durso.
Durso writes that within the policy brief, class of 2025 students Emilie Chau, Nate Howard and Jennifer Melo provided a detailed history on the disparity of sentencing for the drug, in addition to data regarding the relevant demographics of those convicted.
In their brief, Chau, Howard and Melo also noted that passage of the EQUAL Act would “reduce the average sentence of newly convicted people by 31 months and cut the average sentence of nearly all of the 7,800 people eligible by more than six years.”
The co-sponsor of the House bill, North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong ®, notes, “the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine has fueled mass incarceration, devastated lives, and broken communities across the country,” reported The Princeton Policy Advocacy Clinic.
Historically speaking, the disparity in sentencing for the two different strains of cocaine used to be significantly greater, stated Princeton Policy Advocacy Clinic – the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity, and the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced it to the now common 18-to-1 disparity, as noted by Chau, Howard, and Melo in their brief.
The Princeton Policy Advocacy Clinic said New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (D), a co-sponsor of the Senate’s version of the EQUAL Act, champions fair sentences for both charges, noting that “Our justice system must treat people fairly, regardless of which form of a drug is used.”
