Thousands of prisoners convicted of crack-cocaine offenses could see their sentences cut and be released from prison if the U.S. Sentencing Commission makes recent changes in sentencing guidelines retroactive, the Los Angeles Times reported Nov. 12.

A new policy aimed at equalizing penalties for crack and powder cocaine, if applied to past as well as future offenders, would cut an average of about two years off the sentences of 19,500 federal prisoners, which would result in the release of about 2,500 prisoners.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission is being pressed by federal judges, prisoner advocacy groups, and civil-rights organizations to make the changes retroactive. However, no rule change in history has resulted in such a mass release of prisoners, and the U.S. Justice Department opposes retroactivity.

"The unexpected release of 20,000 prisoners ... would jeopardize community safety and threaten to unravel the success we have achieved in removing violent crack offenders from high-crime neighborhoods," the department said.

But Reggie B. Walton, a D.C. federal judge and former White House drug-control official, called the crack-powder sentencing disparity "fundamentally unjust" and called for prior offenders to have their sentences reduced.

"If you are trying to send the message to the greater society that our process is a fair and just process, it becomes very difficult to say, 'Well, we lower the sentences retroactively for other types of drugs, but in reference to crack cocaine, which we know has had a significantly greater adverse impact on people of color, we are not going to do it,'" Walton said.