Add Your Name: Pass the EQUAL Act

Dear Senator Grassley,

Our faith calls us to recognize Christ in others. In that spirit, we Catholic Sisters in Iowa express our strong support for the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law (EQUAL) Act (S.79/H.R.1693) introduced by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries, Kelly Armstrong, Bobby Scott, and Don Bacon in the House and Senators Cory Booker and Dick Durbin in the Senate on January 28, 2021.

The EQUAL Act has bipartisan support in the Senate with six Republican cosponsors and six Democratic cosponsors. We applaud these Senators for supporting needed reforms that will eliminate the disparity in sentencing for cocaine offenses, a major contributor to mass incarceration, and urge you to join them in supporting the EQUAL Act bill.[su_expand more_text=”Read More” height=”0″]While there is no pharmacological difference between crack and powder cocaine, the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act set up a 100:1 ratio for sentencing. Although usage of crack among Black people was only slightly higher than usage among white people, it was stereotypically associated with the Black community, while powder cocaine was associated with white users. The cocaine sentencing disparity meant that a person possessing five grams of crack was sentenced to the same amount of time as someone possessing 500 grams of powder cocaine.

This disparity is one of the causes of overincarceration of Black people for non-violent drug offenses and is one of the great injustices of the failed ‘War on Drugs.’ In the federal criminal legal system, the average Black defendant convicted of a drug offense will serve nearly the same amount of time (58.7 months) as a white defendant would for a violent crime (61.7 months).

Following decades of work by advocates, Congress decreased the sentencing disparity from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1 through the 2010 passage of the Fair Sentencing Act. The EQUAL Act will finally right this wrong by bringing the ratio to 1:1. Upon passage of the EQUAL Act, any person who has not yet been sentenced would be sentenced according to these guidelines, and anyone serving time under the previous guidelines would have the opportunity to request a review and resentencing of their case.

As people of faith, we cannot continue to tolerate racial profiling, police brutality, the loss of future generations to mass incarceration, or the perpetuation of poverty. We affirm the truth that every person is entitled to dignity and equal justice under law. It is time for the Senate to follow the House in taking a firm stance against racism embedded within the criminal legal system by passing the EQUAL Act.[/su_expand]