Thousands of prisoners with crack cocaine convictions have a reason to celebrate. The Fair Sentencing Act, passed into law by Congress in summer 2010, has recently gone into effect retroactively. This means that the average sentence for those convicted of possessing or distributing crack cocaine will be reduced by three years.

About 1,800 prisoners have already been released as a result of the new law and 12,000 prisoners are currently in a position to request a shorter sentence. But before any sentence is reduced, a judge must determine that the release of the prisoners will not pose a danger to the community.

The sentence reductions have come about because the previous sentences were not considered to be fair. To illustrate, under the old system, someone convicted of possessing five grams of crack cocaine would receive a five-year prison sentence.

On the other hand, an individual would need to be convicted of possessing 500 grams of powder cocaine in order to get the same 5-year sentence. That's a 100 to 1 ratio based on the weight of powder cocaine to the weight of crack cocaine for the same minimum sentence.

The huge difference between crack and powder cocaine minimum sentences was seen by some to be unfairly slanted against African-Americans who represent a large portion of the crack cocaine convictions. The new ratio will be 18 to 1.

According to CNN, Michael Nachmanoff, a federal public defender, suggests that the "right answer is 1 to 1, and people in the law enforcement community and the criminal justice system recognize that ... but that just means that there's still more work to do."

The next post will continue to discuss this issue.

Sources: CNN, "New rules slashing crack cocaine sentences go into effect," Carol Cratty, Nov. 1, 2011