Gary Fields has this article in the Wall Street Journal on sentencing issues in the new Congress, with the crack-powder sentencing disparity at the top of the list of incoming Judiciary Chairman John Conyers. There seems to be broad agreement that it is wrong for the sentence for 5 grams of crack to be greater than the sentence for 499 grams of powder. The story quotes representatives of both police chiefs and rank-and-file officers opposing reduction of crack sentencing. The chiefs say the answer to the disparity is to increase sentences for powder.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums weighs in saying to evaluate crack sentencing separately and not compare it to powder. That's a curious argument. There are enough children of movers and shakers doing coke that increasing powder sentences to present crack levels isn't going to happen, and so the disparity argument would seem to be their most effective one. FAMM's argument to evaluate crack sentencing on its own merits seems to overestimate the likelihood that a majority will agree with them on the merits.
FAMM has a history of undercutting their best arguments. The most effective argument against statutory mandatory minimums (if one is interested in swaying swing voters as opposed to preaching to the choir) was that they were unnecessary in an effective system of mandatory guidelines. Yet FAMM filed a brief in Booker to help bring that system down.
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