Two Piecemeal Treatments for a System Addicted to Punishment

For decades, the American criminal legal system has failed to curtail illicit drug use and overdose deaths through punitive and selective enforcement. The federal government has prosecuted people and succeeded in securing many long prison sentences based on drug crimes. In the past two years, two amendments by the United States Sentencing Commission offered a measured reprieve through sentence reductions. Amendment 821 offered the possibility for sentence reductions based on recalculating the guidelines associated with certain prior offenses. Amendment 814 updated policy statements for assessing “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for a sentence reduction. These changes are not revolutionary; however, the amendments are offering thousands of people the opportunity to return to their families sooner. This Article provides a brief history of American drug criminalization and details statistics on federal drug offenses and sentences in 2023–2024. Then, the Article examines Amendment 821, with a focus on “boat cases,” where individuals are receiving sentence reductions based on their lack of prior criminal record. Next, this Article examines reductions to unusually long drug sentences through 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c). The Article concludes by contextualizing these amendments, which are a significant remedy for thousands of people and their families yet fall short of the change required to address our system’s addiction to punishment.