Race, Drugs And Policing

Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, explained how our treatment of criminals has created a new racial caste system, and the only way to make change is by massive social change and Civil Rights movement. The criminal laws often focus on psychoactive drugs used by the minority populations. Minorities are disproportionately targeted, arrested, and punished for drug offenses. For instance, Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian were portrayed as violent, traffickers of drugs and a danger to society. Surveillance was focused on communities of color, also immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, and the homeless, who continue to be the main targets of law enforcement efforts to fight the war on drugs. 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”(drug policy). The drug

With criminality already tied closely to race, the War on Drugs legislation expanded the definition of crime to drug usages. As demonstrated in The New Jim Crow, a 1995 survey found that 95% of participants pictured an African American person when asked to picture a drug user, but in reality, only 15% of the drug users were African Americans. This survey showed us the extent to which media’s overrepresentation of black

The police have had a major role in how the effects of the drug war have been mostly concentrated in the black community. A major reason for this is because of the very nature of drug law enforcement. Normal crime involves an injured party or witness that reports it and asks for police action. In drug crime, both the buyer and seller have no interest in reporting the criminal activity and it is the responsibility of the police to actively search for violators. This allows police the discretionary power to decide in which communities they will search for drug activity and who they will apprehend. Even though the rates of drug abuse are similar in both the black and white communities, police have targeted black communities almost exclusively in their drug control efforts.

In 1950, 70 percent of whites were imprisoned and in 1990 it flipped to 70 percent of African Americans and Latinos imprisoned. In 2008 a study showed that 68 percent of those in prison were African Americans and among drug offenders who were released, 92 percent were black (Vogel, 2016). Nearly 14 million whites and approximately 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug (Criminal, 2016). In 1980 whites were more likely to sell drugs than blacks by 45 percent. In 2012, 6.6 percent of whites sold drugs compared to just 5 percent of blacks. However, blacks are 3.6 times more likely than whites to be arrested for selling drugs and 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for possession of drugs. (Rothwell, 2014). Blacks make up 12 percent of the total population of drug users, but 38 percent are arrested for drug offenses. African Americans essentially serve as much time for drug offenses as whites do for violent offenses. Yet blacks are incarcerated at six times the rate of whites (Criminal, 2016). “Jerome Miller analyzed arrest statistics from several American cities to determine the impact of the War on Drugs on policing. He found striking racial disparities in how drug arrests were made. In many jurisdictions, African American men account for over eighty percent of total drug arrests. In

This paper aims will provide a concise history of drugs deriving from the erythroxylum coca plant and the sociological impact powder and crack cocaine legislation in the American justice system.

Addressing Racial Disparities in Incarceration by Marc Mauer describes the current trends and impact of mass incarceration on colored communities. He precisely focuses on how the criminal justice system contributes to racial disparity within these communities and what changes need to be made to terminate the problem. Mauer explains that communities have very skewed ideas of how their criminal justice system works and that continues to divide the country based on race (2011, p. 88S). Mauer provides examples of racial bias in the three main pit stops of the criminal justice system starting with the officer who makes the arrest, followed by prosecution and finally the sentencing. Law enforcement officers frequently include implicit bias in regards to arrests and public policy decision, especially drug arrests, systematically

Alexander highlights the fact that these statistics contradict the fact that drugs are used and sold at similar rates among different races and that white youth are actually more likely to engage in drug related activity than any other age and racial group. Although the official line is that the increased rates of African Americans arrested for drug charges is due to an increase in crime rates, this has not been seen in the incarceration rates for

Brent Staples’ essay, “When the Paranoids Turn Out to be Right,” acknowledges the issues of racism and racial profiling committed by police. In “Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun,” Geoffrey Canada also expresses views on this issue when he asserts that police fail to protect and serve individuals in poor neighborhoods. Staples contends, “Among the day-to-day acts of discrimination that shadow African Americans, none are more stressful or dangerous than those committed by police, some of whom treat black people as criminals until proved otherwise.” (Staples. 380) Although statistics show that the looming presence of narcotics and violence is more prevalent in urban neighborhoods, police should apply the same effort to protect individuals in these

Numbers suggest that, for instance, while Blacks compose six percent of population in St. Clayton city, they represent 57% of overall police arrests. Similarly, the probability of Black arrest in Berkeley (CA) and Madison (Wis) cities is nine times higher than other racial groups compared to their corresponding population. In addition to this, Bureau of Justice statistics report that at the national level, Blacks are two times more likely to be arrested compared to Whites. Concurring with media reports and national statistics institutes’ estimates, empirical studies also report high proportion of minority arrests compared to their representation in the population (Golub, Johnson, & Dunlap, 2007).

Throughout history, the drug war has always targeted minority groups. “At the root of the drug-prohibition movement in the United States is race, which is the driving force behind the first laws criminalizing drug use, which first appeared as early as the 1870s (Cohen, 56)”. There were many drug laws that targeted minority groups such as the marijuana ban of 1930s that criminalized Mexican migrant farm workers and in the Jim Crow South, reformist wanted to wage war on the Negro cocaine feign so they used African Americans as a scapegoat while they overlooked southern white women who were a bigger problem for the drug epidemic (Cohen, 57). Instead of tackling the root of the drug problem they passed the blame to struggling minority groups within the United States.

“Forget the rhetoric: the evidence shows the NYPD's policy is not about stopping violent crime, but racking up arrests for non-violent drug offenses. While New York should immediately put a stop to its illegal practice of stopping and frisking anyone with a complexion a shade darker than Celine Dion, don't kid yourself: only when the U.S. ends its insane devotion to the war on drugs will we ever be able to effectively address the racist impacts of the criminal justice system.” (Davis, 2010)

African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison for drug possession. Studies have shown that minorities are subject to disparate treatment at arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the entire nation. (Justice, 2004)

This brings up the question; do blacks use drugs more than whites? Contrary to public belief, the higher arrest rates of black drug offenders do not reflect higher rates of drug law violations. Whites, actually, commit more drug crimes than blacks. “By 1988, with national anti-drug efforts in full force, blacks were arrested on drug charges at five times the rate of whites. Statistical as well as anecdotal evidence indicate drug possession and drug selling cut across all racial, socio-economic and geographic lines. But, because drug law enforcement resources have been concentrated in low-income, predominantly minority urban areas, drug offending whites

Although African Americans may make up 13% of the U.S. population and 14% of monthly drug users, they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses. The chances of a policeman stopping blacks are higher than the chances of them stopping whites. It is proven that the police force will ignore the situation of a white person committing a major crime. Compare any case of a black person involved with drugs to the case of Dylann Roof, a white twenty-one year old that opened fire and killed nine black people, and nothing makes sense. Witnesses say he proclaimed his hate for black people right before he began shooting. When he was arrested, the police were very polite to him and never treated him

Blacks are (proportionately) more likely than whites to live in such inner-city areas and thus more likely than whites to be arrested on drug charges.7 But one very important reason that blacks are more likely than whites to live in disorganized inner-city areas is that a greater percentage of blacks than whites are poor and unemployed. What might at first look like a straightforward racial disparity turns out to reflect economic status. 3. Blacks who travel the full route of the criminal justice system and end up in jail or prison are close in economic condition to whites who do. In 1978, 53 percent of black jail inmates had pre-arrest incomes below $3,000, compared with 44 percent of whites.8 1983, the median pre-arrest income of black jail inmates was $4,067 and that of white jail inmates was $6,312. About half of blacks in jail were unemployed before arrest and 44 percent of whites were.9 In 1991, 30 percent of whites in the prison population and 38 percent of blacks reported full- or part-time employment during the month before their arrest.10 4. Some studies suggest that race works to heighten the effects of economic condition on criminal justice outcomes, so that “being unemployed and black substantially increase[s] the chances of incarceration over those associated with being either unemployed or black.”11 This means that racism will