Word: cracking
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...decades ago, this 100:1 drug-quantity ratio appealed to legislators who believed crack was instantly addictive and caused violent behavior. And the sentencing commission worked these dramatically different drug thresholds into its otherwise nuanced sentencing guidelines, which add jail time for aggravating factors like the presence of a firearm and reduce it for such things as acceptance of guilt...
...shown there is little difference between the two cocaine variants, but that didn't change the way the law treated them. Congress blocked the Commission's first attempt, in 1995, to reduce the sentencing disparity and so far has refused to change the laws that disproportionately affect low-level crack offenders. So while the new guidelines have reduced the penalties above the mandatory minimums, those minimums are still firmly in place...
...revising its guidelines, the federal commission in some ways is simply catching up with the states. Amid almost universal criticism of the federal government's 100:1 ratio, only 13 states still make a legal distinction between crack and powder cocaine, and none of these states applies as harsh a ratio as 100:1. But according to Douglas Berman, a professor and sentencing expert at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, prosecutors have an extraordinary amount of discretion in deciding whether a case gets tried in state or federal court. "Ironically," he says, "the more lenient a state...
...that's not likely to change soon. While the new guidelines may inspire Congress to reexamine the federal mandatory-minimum laws, no one wants to be perceived as soft on crack dealers. Thus most of the proposed legislation to equalize cocaine sentences ratchets up the penalties for the powdered version, rather than reducing them for crack...
...country where therapy is hardly common and men are not known to be good listeners to the problems of their girlfriends and wives, it may be more than simply entertainment that brings clients to a host club at the crack of dawn...