The following appeared in a New York Times editorial:
Drug sentences around the country are about to get significantly shorter. On Thursday, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency, voted unanimously to reduce the guideline ranges for drug trafficking offenses.
Federal judges rely heavily on the guidelines, which calculate an advisory sentencing range for all federal crimes. For example, trafficking 28 grams of crack cocaine carries a range of five years and three months to six-and-a-half years in prison. But tying punishment to drug quantities means many low-level offenders have gotten disproportionately long sentences.
The new guidelines, by reducing the ranges, will shorten the average sentence by 11 months, which translates over the next five years to more than 6,500 fewer inmates in overflowing federal prisons. The guidelines change is part of a broader bipartisan push to reform harsh drug sentencing laws, which are responsible for nearly half of the federal prison population. Congress can do even more by reducing the mandatory minimum sentences that have driven so much of the federal prison crisis. Legislation to do exactly that was introduced last year and is still waiting to be passed.
Crowdfunding and the SEC: The Investor Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission is a group of 21 money managers, investor advocates and academics who advise the commission on regulation. On Thursday, the committee unanimously panned the SEC's proposed rules on crowdfunding, the practice of soliciting investments online for private startup ventures.
The rules, required by the 2012 law that legalized crowdfunding, are supposed to protect individual investors from the risks of fraudulent and unsuitable offerings online. The committee concluded — as we have — that the SEC proposal fails to carry out both the law's instructions and the agency's investor-protection mandate.
The committee made six recommendations for reworking the proposal. The SEC needs to start over on the crowdfunding rules and get them right.