in 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the sentencing disparity between offenses for crack and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1. The scientifically unjustifiable 100:1 ratio meant that people faced longer sentences for offense involving crack cocaine than for offenses involving the same amount of powder cocaine - two forms of the same drug. Most disturbingly, because the majority of people arrested for crack offenses are African American, the 100:1 ratio resulted in vast racial disparities in the average length of sentences for comparable offenses. On average, under the 100:1 regime, African Americans served virtually as much time in prison for non-violent drug offenses as whites did for violent offenses. The FSA represents a decade-long, and truly bipartisan effort to reduce the racial disparities caused by the draconian crack cocaine sentencing laws and to restore confidence in the criminal justice system - particularly in communities of color.

In 2011, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to retroactively apply the new FSA Sentencing Guidelines to individuals sentenced before the law was enacted. What they have failed to do is to apply fairness to all 50 states, which will potentially release 120,000 as opposed to just 12,000.