Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) Hillary Clinton will push for a series of criminal justice reform plans Friday by calling for eliminating the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine and ending racial profiling, according to Clinton aides.
Speaking at the Ministers Luncheon of the 16th Annual Creating Opportunity Conference and her first meeting with African Americans for Hillary at Clark Atlanta University, Clinton will lay out how her criminal justice reform agenda will focus on three areas: Policing, incarceration and reentry into society.
“Clinton will fight to ensure equal amounts of crack and powder cocaine carry equal sentences and apply this change retroactively,” a Clinton aide said ahead of Friday’s speeches.
In 2010, Congress passed The Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the difference between offenses for crack and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1. Clinton will argue, as many others have, that “crack and powder cocaine are two forms of the same drug and continuing to treat them differently disproportionately hurts black Americans,” the aide said ahead of the speech.
Clinton, in an effort to reduce the federal prison population, will call for reducing the disparity between mandatory sentences of crack and powder cocaine to 1-to-1.
The 2016 candidate will also call for ending racial profiling, pledging to back legislation to ban racial profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, “by prohibiting them from relying on a person’s race when conducting routine or spontaneous investigatory activities.”
Categories: Americas