Panel makes crack term guidelines retroactive

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. agency that sets federal sentencing guidelines voted on Tuesday to make retroactive a recent reduction in recommended crack cocaine penalties.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission said the retroactivity will take effect on March 3, 2008, but not every prisoner currently serving time for crack cocaine offenses will be eligible for a lower sentence.

It will be left to sentencing judges to determine whether an offender is eligible and how much the sentence should be reduced, the commission said in a statement.

"That determination will be made only after consideration of many factors, including the commission's direction to consider whether lowering the offender's sentence would pose a danger to public safety," the statement said.

The crack cocaine sentencing guidelines were lowered on November 1. A first-time offender with five grams or more now faces 51 to 63 months in prison, down from 63 to 78 months previously.

The Justice Department objected to the reduced sentences, which a department official said could apply to about 20,000 offenders in the federal system.

"Making the revised guidelines for crack cocaine retroactive will make thousands of dangerous prisoners, many of them violent gang members, eligible for immediate release," acting Deputy Attorney General Craig Morford said.

"In the coming year, retroactive application will result in the release back into the community of more than 2,500 additional crack dealers than would be released if the rule was not retroactive," Morford said.

The sentencing commission's action came a day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in cases involving crack cocaine and ecstasy that federal judges can impose lighter prison sentences than federal guidelines specify.

There is also pressure in Congress to revise a 1986 law mandating longer sentences for crack, which is considered more addictive than powder cocaine and a source of street violence.

Blacks account for about 80 percent of the federal crack cocaine convictions.

Critics have called the disparity in sentences for crack and powder cocaine unfair and racially biased, leading to claims of inconsistency in the U.S. judicial system.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; editing by Eric Walsh)