U.S. District Judge Richard P. Conaboy called a portion of 1986’s Anti-Drug Abuse Act that treated crack offenders “A bad piece of legislation, badly written.”

The sentencing is 100 times more harshly than those involved with powder cocaine.

So Judge Conaboy is delighted to finally see a change in federal sentencing guidelines that took effect in March. The change reduces sentences for crack offenders and has been applied to cases that have already gone through sentencing.

Under the old guidelines, a person selling 5 grams of crack would be sentenced to at least five years in prison. A person selling 500 grams of powder cocaine would get the same minimum sentence.

Critics say the disparity unfairly punished minorities and the poor, who are more likely to buy and sell crack because it’s a cheaper, more potent high. Indeed, of the 4,941 people eligible for a reduction under the change in guidelines, 4,200 are black, according to information collected by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

So far, applications for sentence reductions have been filed for nearly 200 defendants across the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which spans 33 counties, including Lackawanna and Luzerne.

Judges have granted reductions in 136 cases and rejected another 57, according to statistics kept at Scranton’s federal probation office. The local cases join more than 7,000 crack offenders around the nation who have received sentence reductions since March.

No quick fix

But the change has been a long time in the works, Judge Conaboy and other court officials say.

From 1994 to 1998, Judge Conaboy was chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a group that sets and steers federal sentencing policies and practices. Even then, one of the commission’s priorities was trying to convince legislators to narrow the gap between crack and powder cocaine  prison sentences.

“It takes such a long, long time to get anything done in Washington,” the judge said. “Over the years, those efforts were rejected by Congress.”

But since the change took effect, the flood of requests has kept federal public defenders especially busy, since a vast majority of those eligible cannot afford attorneys.

The Middle District’s chief public defender, Jim Wade, said the stream of requests has tapered off somewhat. In addition to answering questions from inmates, he and his staffers across the Middle District have been searching for defendants who may not know they’re eligible.

“This means a lot to folks,” Mr. Wade said. “It’s nice to surprise them, tell them they’re eligible for a reduction.”

In the Middle District, the average sentence reduction is somewhere between 15 and 18 months, according to Len Bogart, chief U.S. probation officer in Scranton.

Changing numbers

About 35 percent of inmates across the nation who were granted reductions by federal courts had been released as of May 31, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Locally, many of those out of prison after a sentence reduction are being sent to Philadelphia or New York, Mr. Bogart said.

That reflects the demographics of drug dealers prosecuted in the Middle District, according to Martin C. Carlson, interim U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

“While the effects are felt here … many of the defendants are not from here,” Mr. Carlson said.

He also said that his staff, as well as judges and probation officers, are looking hard at every request for a reduction to make sure that releasing someone would not be a threat to public safety. Judges have the ability to reject sentence reductions, even if the defendant is eligible, for a variety of reasons.

“Everyone wants to make sure this change doesn’t have an adverse effect on public safety,” Mr. Carlson said. “What we’re doing is, at three different levels, assessing public safety concerns” before the sentence is reduced.