Congress legislated a deliberate 100-to-1 crack-to-powder sentencing disparity in the 1980s

Evidence

For example, the Act called for a 10-year mandatory term of imprisonment for distributing 50 grams or more of crack cocaine—the same sentence as distributing 5,000 grams of powder cocaine. Later, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 that upped the ante by extending mandatory minimum prison sentences to simple possession of 5 grams or more of crack cocaine—the same sentence as possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine. In so doing, Congress created the controversial 100-to-1 crack-to-powder cocaine ratio. Notably, the federal readoption of mandatory minimums for drug offenses reversed federal law, which renounced and removed such sentences in the federal system in the 1970s (Murakawa, 2014; Musto, 1999). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1062

Categorization

• XREF: The concrete 100-to-1 ratio is useful data for the reader’s legal-institutional bias research; instance of policy encoding group disparity.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 1062