Jordan Kushner says: "The "war on drugs" is really a war on people of color. Most
people
incarcerated for drugs are Black, Latino, or Native American."
Stephanie says: now we're getting to a whole other heart of the problem! I agree with
Jordan Kushner and I'm glad he said what many of us are thinking. We need to change
the course of our drug laws. I hope this bill is a good start.
In 1986, President Reagan began a drug-deterring plan known as the “War on Drugs.”
Since the mid-80’s, the United States undertook aggressive law enforcement strategies
and criminal justice policies aimed at destroying drug abuse. The costs and benefits
of this national war are intensely debated. What isn’t debatable, however, is its
impact on Black Americans and Hispanic/Latino Americans. Purportedly color blind, the
“War on Drugs” has become an attack on racial minorities, and specifically African
Americans.
According to data from the United States government, 80 percent of cocaine users
are White, middle-class, suburbanite men.
Because police look for drugs primarily among African Americans and Latinos, they
of course find a disproportionate number of them with contraband. Therefore, the more
minorities arrested for drug incidences, the greater the reinforcement and belief that
drug trafficking is primarily amongst minority groups – perpetuating the cycle and
causing greater suspicion of minorities to be the majority committing drug crimes or
trafficking. At the same time, this gives less attention to Whites, causing fewer
arrests among the White population and therefore causing the perception that there are
fewer drug offenses committed within this population. And so, the cycle continues.
According to Human Rights Watch, Blacks comprise 13 percent of the entire United
States population; but make up 30 percent of all people arrested and 41 percent of
people in jail and 49 percent of those in prison. One in ten Black males, ages in
their twenties and early thirties, are in prison or have been incarcerated or are on
parole. One in three Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 was either in jail or
prison, or on parole or probation in 1995. One of every twenty Black men over the age
of eighteen in the United States is in State or Federal prison compared to one in one
hundred eighty White men. If this rate keeps up, one in every five Black men will be
incarcerated at some point in their lifetime.
According to an article in Horizon Magazine (online) by George Rice (1999), of all
drug offenders in the state prisons, Blacks comprise 62.7 percent and Whites make up
36.7 percent of the prison population. Relative to population, Black men are admitted
to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of
White men. Yet, there are five times more Caucasian drug users than African American
ones!
These national statistics are alarming but only mask even worse racial disparities
when you look at the numbers on an individual state level. Nationwide, Blacks are
incarcerated at 8.2 times greater the rate than the rate of incarceration of Whites.
But in Minnesota, Blacks are incarcerated at 23 times the rate of Whites. This is by
far one of the most severe disparities of all the states. Washington D.C. has the
only higher rate than Minnesota, but their African American population is many times
larger than in Minnesota. This is what is so disturbing. If you are a male, Black,
over 18, and live in Minnesota, you are 26.8 times more likely to be in prison than a
White man over the age of 18.
The drug problems, themselves, need to be addressed and helped. We need to
increase the use of special drug courts where addicted offenders are given
rehabilitation and treatment choices rather than prison sentences. We need to
increase the availability of substance abuse treatment in the communities and the
prisons. We need to decrease the amount of a sentence for non-violent offenders.
And finally, law enforcement strategies need to be re-directed to emphasize the
arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of drug importers, manufacturers, and major
distributors (e.g. “king pins”) rather than concentrating on low-level offenders and
street-level retail dealers.
(This is an excerpt from a paper I wrote a few years ago.)
Let's also not forget that you cannot vote once you've been incarcerated. If this
currently debated bill goes through and people are sentenced for rehab instead of
being incarcerated, will they lose their voting privileges as one does when
incarcerated? Does anyone know the answer to this?
Stephanie
Wedge
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