On Crack Sentencing: 100 Times Zero Is Still Zero

Prof. Berman at the Sentencing Law and Policy Blog continues to argue that the recent tweak to the federal sentencing guidelines around crack is, in his words, "soooo significant." I have enormous respect for Prof. Berman and don't claim to be very knowledgeable about sentencing, but I just don't follow his logic on this point. He notes, for example, that under the new guidelines, "roughly 70% of crack sentences will be reduced, on average, from just over 10 years to just under 9 years."

Maybe that's interesting from an academic point of view. But for the defendant looking at almost nine years in a federal penitentiary for a trivial drug offense, this is really not much of a change. Prof. Berman points out that there are potentially a lot of defendants who will be affected by this revision, but 100 times zero is still zero. So is 4,000 times zero, or whatever number of defendants one might want to consider.

Time will tell, I guess, whether this really is a "sea change" or just the tide running out of the bay. From the perspective of somebody interested in keeping people from wasting their lives in prison, it doesn't look like much at the moment.