Crack as Proxy: Aggressive Federal Prosecutions as Institutional Racism?

• In Event: The Practice of Justice: New Methods and Meanings to Think About Fairness, Equity and Efficiency in the Courts

Abstract

The federal system’s approach to crack sentencing came to exemplify the quintessential American “war on drugs,” in that it has been exceptionally punitive, meting out substantial prison sentences in crack cases. This paper reformulates the key questions of how, where and under what conditions federal crack prosecutions produce racially unequal outcomes. In light of the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, we revisit the federal regulation of crack cocaine in the war on drugs era, theorizing that aggressive pursuit of crack cases at the district level may signal institutionalized bias within that locale. Specifically, we look more closely at crack case processing and sentencing practices as a way to more fully flesh out how the federal version of the “war on crack” has evolved and been deployed in trial courts. Using US Sentencing Commission and federal court data between 1993-2011, we posit that prosecutorial aggressiveness in crack cases may function as a proxy for institutional racial bias.

Authors

• Marisa Omori, University of Miami

• Mona Lynch, University of California, Irvine