Yes my brother, I do.
Decades of Disparity: New Study Underscores Severity of Racial Bias in Drug-Related Law Enforcement
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/3/decades_of_disparity_new_study_underscores
Serving 5 to Life, Racial Disparities in the Enforcement of Drug Sentencing Laws in Georgia
Abstract: A 1996 Human Rights Watch Report entitled “Human Rights Violations in Drug Enforcement in Georgia” revealed that at the end of the 20th century, racial disparities in the treatment of African American and white drug users were prevalent. Specifically, the reports states that “Georgia's drug laws by their terms are racially neutral, but application of these drugs laws has had a disproportional effect on blacks. Before the "war on drugs" was launched in the mid 1980s, more whites than blacks were arrested for drug offenses. By the end of the decade, blacks were arrested for drugs more than twice as often as whites. The disparity continues into the 1990s. Although blacks make up less than one-third of the population of Georgia, 64.2% of those arrested for drugs between 1990 and 1995 were black. In each of those years, comparing the rate of arrests per 100,000 adult males the black arrest rate was five times greater than the white arrest rate. Comparing the ratio of actual arrests to population reveals that whites were arrested for cocaine offenses (447.2 per 100,000 adults) at a rate of one-seventeenth the rate for blacks (7668.4 per 100,000 adults).”
At the turn of the 21st century, the color line still appears to be in existence as it relates to law enforcement. In spite of the progress of African Americans in Georgia in the political arena, from mayors and state legislatures, to congress, the prison system has continued to be a mechanism to control elements of the African American population. The War on Drugs has resulted in long-term prison sentences even for non-violent drug offenders. This paper will explore the evolution of drug sentencing laws in the state of Georgia and the subsequent enforcement of those laws with an attempt to provide an understanding of why the disparities in arrests, convictions and sentencing exists. The paper will rely on resources from the state legislature of Georgia, the Georgia Crime Information Center, the Georgia Department of Corrections, and the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, and other pertinent research data and literature in this field.
Drugs - Drug Users By Race And Ethnicity
Drug Use in Thousands, 12 and Older, 1999-2000 Annualized Average
Race/Ethnicity -------------Used Any Illicit Drug
------------------------------------ In Lifetime In Past Year In Past Month
White ---------------------67,807 -- 18,411 --- 10,231
Black -----------------------9,186 -- 3,028 ----- 1,734
American Indian/Alaska Native - 587 ----213 -------129
Asian/Pacific Islander-------- 1,273 ----366------- 192
Hispanic Origin -------------- 6,791 --2,335----- 1,266
Total ---------------------- 85,644 -24,353 --- 13,552
http://social.jrank.org/pages/1308/Drugs-Drug-Users-By-Race-Ethnicity.html#ixzz0U2QvPgG1
Drug Policy Alliance Nertwork - Race and the Drug War
White users of illegal drugs are far less likely than non-white users to be arrested for drug use. When white users are arrested, the consequences tend to be less severe. In addition, the cumulative impact of the racist Drug War on non-white communities is enormous. As the Drug Policy Alliance Network notes,
Despite the fact that drug use is more or less consistent across racial lines, many punitive drug laws are based on beliefs that certain communities of color commonly abuse certain substances. Due to the racial injustices caused by the drug war, supporting drug policy reform can help end racial inequality.
Although African Americans comprise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses, causing critics to call the war on drugs the "New Jim Crow." The higher arrest rates for African Americans and Latinos do not reflect a higher abuse rate in these communities but rather a law enforcement emphasis on inner city areas. . . .
Once arrested, people of color are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than whites. The best-known example of the inequality in sentencing is the disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine sentences. Crack and powder cocaine have the same active ingredient, but crack is marketed in less expensive quantities and in lower-income communities of color. A five gram sale of crack cocaine receives a five-year federal mandatory minimum sentence, while an offender must sell 500 grams of powder cocaine to get the same sentence. In 1986, before the enactment of federal mandatory minimum sentencing for crack cocaine offenses, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 11 percent higher than for whites. Four years later, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 49 percent higher.
The racial disparities in drug arrests and convictions have had a devastating effect on families. Of the 1.5 million minor children who had a parent incarcerated in 1999, African American children were nearly nine times more likely to have a parent incarcerated than white children and Latino children were three times more likely to have a parent incarcerated than white children.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/communities/race/
Drug Policy: Failure at Home
In addition, current domestic drug policies are racist in effect if not in intent. Drug offenses constitute the largest category—over 1.5 million people in 1999—of arrests in America. Although 37% of those arrested for drug crimes are black, 59% of those convicted of drug offenses and 63% of those convicted of drug trafficking are black. Furthermore, only one-third of convicted whites are sentenced to prison, yet one-half of convicted blacks serve time. Blacks convicted of drug trafficking are incarcerated for 26% longer on average than whites; overall, the average black serves an 18% longer sentence than a comparable white criminal.
In addition, “racial profiling” practices by police mean that blacks are stopped and searched for drugs much more frequently than whites—when entering the country, driving, walking down the street, or simply standing in front of their homes. This persecution in the name of fighting drugs means that people of color are disproportionately imprisoned, have their families dislocated, and see their job and educational prospects destroyed.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/1413
The War on Drugs Is Really a War on Minorities
http://www.alternet.org/rights/49782/
Race, Prison, and the Drug War
"Most drug offenders are white. Five times as many whites use drugs as blacks. Yet blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison. The solution to this racial inequity is not to incarcerate more whites, but to reduce the use of prison for low-level drug offenders and to increase the availability of substance abuse treatment."
"The racially disproportionate nature of the war on drugs is not just devastating to black Americans. It contradicts faith in the principles of justice and equal protection of the laws that should be the bedrock of any constitutional democracy; it exposes and deepens the racial fault lines that continue to weaken the country and belies its promise as a land of equal opportunity; and it undermines faith among all races in the fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system. Urgent action is needed, at both the state and federal level, to address this crisis for the American nation."
"Our criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased. The injustices of the criminal justice system threaten to render irrelevant fifty years of hard-fought civil rights progress."
According to the federal Household Survey, "most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (
72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998." And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%.
Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999), p. 13; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 343, Table 4.10, p. 435, Table 5.48, and p. 505, Table 6.52; Beck, Allen J., Ph.D. and Mumola, Christopher J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 10, Table 16; Beck, Allen J., PhD, and Paige M. Harrison, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p. 11, Table 16.
Among persons convicted of drug felonies in state courts, whites were less likely than African-Americans to be sent to prison. Thirty-three percent (33%) of convicted white defendants received a prison sentence, while 51% of African-American defendants received prison sentences.
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/64
I have MUCH MUCH more if you care to digest it.
And who do we have to thank for the racist war on drugs?
None other than the greatest incarceration president in American history .. BILL CLINTON.
