The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 did not specify whether its reduction should apply retroactively to all those currently serving time for crack cocaine convictions, whether or not it applied to state or only federal prisoners, or just those sentenced since its passage, or even the exact date its provisions should begin to be enforced at all. The Obama administration not only failed to take advantage of its mandate to pursue justice for tens of thousands of families whose loved ones and potential caregivers and breadwinners were serving unjust and disproportionate sentences – it sent Eric Holder’s Justice Department into court to argue against retroactivity, against the reduction of sentences for inmates tried or sentenced since the law was passed, against its being applied to state prisoners, For all practical purposes, as Professor Douglas A. Berman of Ohio State University pointed out in October 2010,
“…President Obama’s Department of Justice has adopted the advocacy policy that the unfair and now reformed old crack sentencing statute should and must be applied for as long as possible to as many defendants as possible…”
For more than eleven months AFTER the passage of the so-called Fair Sentencing Act, the Obama Department of Justice went into courts again and again seeking to retain and expand the regime of mass incarceration, despite a torrent of appeals from advocacy organizations and the families of inmates across the country. Finally in July 2011, the Justice Department issued a memo to prosecutors declaring that only offenses committed after the August 3, 2010 signing date of the Fair Sentencing Act were eligible for sentencing reduction under its provisions.