The War On Drugs Race And The Legitimacy Of The Criminal Justice System

While looking at the massive number of people incarcerated in the United States, it is easy to see that a major disparity presents itself when looking at the races of those incarcerated. The numbers are astonishing: “Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32 percent of the US population, they comprised 56 percent of all incarcerated people in 2015” (“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet”, n.d.). These questions arise: Is our criminal justice system discriminatory? Or, do minorities actually engage in more crime than whites? The statistics are clear:

Doris Marie Provine writes her book, Unequal under law: Race in the War on Drugs, to inform her audience that race plays a key role in the War on Drugs. She writes about how this war has become a war on race rather than a war intended to improve drug abuse. Provine begins her book with some background on the first account of the “war on drugs”. She describes how the prohibition age was the beginning of this war which targeted women and blacks. In Unequal under law, Provine explains how different race groups have been given crime labels. Africans have been labeled as the cocaine abusers, Mexicans are known as the weed smokers, and Chinese are deemed the opium addicts. She argues that the government supported the war on drugs although it knew

The facts speak for themselves, people of color are the enemies and targets in the war on drugs. They also tell us that fighting back is useless due to the racial bias that is inherent in the criminal justice system. This might come as a surprise to the majority that believe discrimination is no longer in existence, considering that it is a black man living in the White House. Ever since Barack Obama pledged to serve as the forty-fourth president

The Drug Policy Alliance is an organization dedicated to making reforms to US drug laws, abolishing the failed the war on drugs, and advocating for harm reduction strategies. Located on their website, the article "Race and the Drug War", cites several troubling statistics and everyday realities that link the drug war to racism and discrimination. Among these, the fact that despite the rates of drug use being similar across racial lines, black Americans are more than three times as likely to be arrested for drug crimes. This is due to the fact that low-income, predominantly black neighborhoods are heavily patrolled for drug activity while higher-income neighborhoods are less scrutinized. The aim of the article is meant to persuade the reader

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012), Michelle Alexander empathizes on the issues of the complex of criminal justice systems which has a significant impact on people of color as The New Jim Crow. She also attaches significant to the racial dimensions of the “War on Drugs” because the convictions for drug offenses are only the most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the United States. This argues that federal drug policy inequity targets groups of color, keeping millions of young, black men in a vicious cycle behind the bars.

The federal law, which punished crack offenses at a rate 100 times that of powdered cocaine, is a racist policy. The criminal justice system penalties for possession of crack, a drug often used by poor African American are more harsher than the penalties for the possession of powdered cocaine, whose users are white people. This is evidence of the racial disparities in the War on Drug. The War on Drugs has allowed minorities to become easier targets for law enforcement. The unequal treatment in sentencing between crack and powdered cocaine users is not justified. Crack is popular in black community and powdered cocaine is more commonly use by white. Law enforcement uses the federal law, which impact lower minority people who are able to afford

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

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)

The war on drugs began during Nixon’s administration in 1968 and was designed in efforts to reduce the amount of drugs being sold and consumed in America (Moore & Elkavich, 2008). Nixon believed that getting drugs out of the hands of people would make the country a safer and better place, however these new drug laws did not reduce the amount of drugs being consumed or distributed. Instead, these laws incarcerated a large amount of people and have resulted in a continuation of inequality in our country. While Marx would argue that the war on drugs prolongs inequality through class conflict because it targets low class individuals, advantages upper class communities while disadvantaging the poor communities, and it makes the cycle of class differences continue, Wells-Barnett would argue that the war on drugs perpetuates inequality through its racism because it was created in response to colored people using drugs, it targets black males, and the sentencing varies based on whom the drug is linked to.

The “War on Drugs” established that the impact of incarceration would be used as a weapon to combat the illegal drug problem in this country. Unfortunately, this war against drugs has fallen disproportionately on black Americans. “Blacks constitute 62.6% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons in 1996, whereas whites constituted 36.7%. The drug offender admissions rate for black men ranges from 60 to an astonishing 1,146 per 100,000 black men. In contrast, the white rate begins at 6 and rises no higher than 139 per 100,000 white men. Drug offenses accounted for nearly two out of five of all black admissions to state prisons (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” The disproportionate rates at which black drug offenders are sent to prison originate in racially disproportionate rates of arrest.

“The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison” (Alexander, 2012). The numbers tell the story better than words can: black people are more likely to go to prison than any other race in the United States, shown by the fact that more than 60% of the prison population is composed of people of color (The Sentencing Project, 2016). These statistics can be traced back to several different cause, including the Era of Jim Crow and the War on Drugs, both of which led to higher policing in minority areas.

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.

After getting the public support for his campaign, America saw an unprecedented rise in its incarceration rate, particularly among African Americans. The “ War on Drugs ” has had a disparate impact on the black community even though blacks and whites use drugs at approximately the same levels. This is achieved through a myriad of formal and informal practices. African-Americans are targeted and prosecuted at a much higher rate even though they are not statistically any likelier to abuse or sell drugs than the white population.

The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe (Pettit, 2004). In the 1980s, U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession to drug trafficking. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to decrease steadily. Many urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be black because law

The War on Drugs is a deep-rooted controversial campaign of prohibition and military aid that has been disputed for many years. There are constant debates as to whether there will ever be a viable solution to the problem. However, as we continue to pursue the “war on drugs,” it has become increasingly evident that “winning” the war seems to be an impossible task. Drug prohibition and the undertaking of the war on drugs have stirred much controversy over its moral and logical implications. While there are many drugs that exist that are unhealthy when abused, it has become apparent that the drug policies in the United States, as well as many parts of the world, are inconsistent and oppressive. Ironically, drug laws were initially created for the good of society, but it has become increasingly clear that drug laws and our undertaking of the drug war have only served to cause problems. The current war on drugs has led to devastating effects on society both economically and socially. Violence and corruption have subjugated throughout the United States, Mexico and many other parts of the world. Additionally, drug prohibition efforts have had very little impact on the supply of illegal drugs and have had little to no success in reducing the demand for illegal drugs. The war on drugs, which is fueled by corruption and propaganda, needs to come to an end for the betterment of society.