Since I started working on this story about crack sentencing guidelines, I've been receiving bunches of email, via Corrlinks, as well as hand-written letters, from people serving various sentences related to crack-cocaine charges. I thought I'd share a few:

My name is M. I'm a federal inmate that was sentenced to 151 months of conspiracy* to distribute 50 grams or more of crack-cocaine base. I feel that 151 months is entirely too much time for a man that was on crack cocaine.

The government gave me a sentence as if I was a drug dealer. They took my past criminal history and enhanced me, and given me all this time.

Now that the new crack law has been passed, why can't I receive any relief? I'll tell you why... because I have a lengthy criminal history. That came behind my addiction to crack-cocaine.

I accept responsibility for my actions. Being at a crack house daily. I helped count some money one time and I retrieved a box that was outside. Which I had any knowledge of it [sic] possessing any sort of contraband. Is it fair to take a man's life for more than a decade for petty violations as those?

But you know what? I turned this negative situation and turned it to a positive life for myself. I have earned a high school diploma, successfully completed PC fundamentals, Spanish class, C.D.L.'s [commercial driver's license?], also I have completed the 40-hr drug class with countless of voluntary hours of Narcotics Anonymous which I really enjoyed, helping myself and others since I came to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Brendan, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this experience I've been going through. Hopefully the courts will recognize that they're being unfair to addicts and career offenders and maybe take a deeper look into this conspiracy ordeal*.

Thank you for your time and understanding,
M.

*Clarification: By "conspiracy," I take it to mean that M. feels like his sentence as being part of a "conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of crack-cocaine base" is an unfair representation of his actual role in the situation. Conspiracy law is notorious in public-defender circles as a means to smack someone who happened to be on the edges of a crime with the full sentence of the crime's mastermind and primary beneficiary. From a story I wrote earlier this year about someone sentenced for being part of a "conspiracy" that he knew next to nothing about:

Conspiracy, says attorney Amanda Lee, is what the state charges you with when it doesn't have anything more robust. "Conspiracy law makes it very easy to rope in people on the periphery," she says, "and put them on the hook for something happening at the center."

Whether M. was at the center or at the periphery of a plan to sell 50 grams of crack, his point stands—a lower sentence and more intensive treatment would be better for everyone involved (himself, his community, the overtaxed prison system) than sitting in stir for 12.5 years.