Race and the War on Drugs

Many policy experts and authors have claimed that there are racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, imprisonment, rehabilitation programs, and other aspects of the War on Drugs.

Arrests / Imprisonment

2009. Percent of adult males incarcerated by race and ethnicity.

In 1986, the U.S. Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 which, amongst other things, created a 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for crack vs. powder cocaine possession, which some people consider to be a racist law which discriminates against minorities, who are more likely to use crack than powder cocaine. People convicted in federal court of possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine will receive a minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years in federal prison. On the other hand, possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine carries the same sentence. Some other authors, however, have pointed out that the Congressional Black Caucus backed the law, which they say implies that the law cannot be racist.

Crime statistics show that in 1999 in the United States blacks were far more likely to be targeted by law enforcement for drug crimes, and received much stiffer penalties and sentences than whites. A 2013 study by the American Civil Liberties Union determined that a black person in the United States was 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, even though both races have similar rates of marijuana use. Iowa had the highest racial disparity of the fifty states. Black people in Iowa were arrested for marijuana possession at a rate 8.4 times higher than white people.

In 1998 there were wide racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, sentencing and deaths. African-Americans, who only comprised 13% of regular drug users, made up for 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of people sent to prison for drug possession crimes. Nationwide African-Americans were sent to state prisons for drug offenses 13 times more often than white men, even though they only comprise 13% of regular drug users. A 2015 study found that minorities have been disproportionately arrested for drug offenses, and that this difference "cannot be explained by differences in drug offending, nondrug offending, or residing in the kinds of neighborhoods likely to have heavy police emphasis on drug offending."

In the late 1990s, black and white women had similar levels of drug use during pregnancy. In spite of this, black women were 10 times as likely as white women to be reported to a child welfare agency for prenatal drug use.

According to Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow and a professor of law at Stanford Law School, even though drug trading is done at similar rates all over the U.S., most people arrested for it are colored. Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. Bias plays an important role in this: most Americans now think of colored people when they are asked to imagine a drug user, which leads to discrimination in the criminal justice system "consciously" and "unconsciously." Also, because police officers are just as biased as others, colored people are more likely to be investigated than whites. Thus, she believes racial bias in the War on Drugs is a huge problem because the majority of prisoner are arrested for drug related crime, and in at least 15 states, 3/4 of them are black or Latino people.

Although many have claimed that there is little difference between rates of drug use between blacks and whites based on surveys, one study have shown that blacks, when compared with whites, are much more likely to underreport their own drug use in surveys. However, the underreporting effect diminished to a nonsignificant value when socioeconomic variable was taken into an account.

Legal Standpoint

When sifting through the layers of policy concerning the War on Drugs, one can find racial disparities and obstacles facing those minorities on trial and during punishment. On the surface, de jure suggests that everyone has an equal opportunity in defending themselves from criminal accusations concerning drugs. However, careful scrutiny of judicial jargon along with assessment of limitations of marginalized groups suggests otherwise (de facto). The idea that minorities have to somehow “prove” that racial discrimination was being used during a search and seizure (United States v. Armstrong, 1996) and that the Equal Protection Law has been separated from the Fourth Amendment through successive court decisions leaves the accused at a disadvantage. This separation is open to police discretion and availability of such discretion has been created by court case. The idea that defendants had to show favorability of whites in “similarly situated” court cases was reinforced by the 2002 United States v. Bass decision in which the Sixth Circuit court’s decision to favor a death-eligible, black defendant was reversed; the man had provided data that suggested that the United States charges blacks with death-eligible offenses more than twice as often as it charges whites.The Supreme Court’s conclusion was that raw data does not say anything in particular of “similarly situated” defendants. Moreover, there is the idea that those with tangential associations of the accused are not open to having sentence reductions as they don’t have other dealers to “rat out”; this generally leaves women at the disadvantage as they are usually found as holders of drugs without information (Coker 834). Also, there is a noted racial disparity of those punished and rehabilitated. Professor Cathy Schnieder of International Service at American University notes that in 1989, African Americans, representing 12-15 percent of all drug use in the United States, made up 41 percent of all arrests. That is a noted increase from 38 percent in 1988. Whites were 47 percent of those in state-funded treatment centers and made up less than 10 percent of those committed to prison.

African-American Communities

The War on Drugs has incarcerated disproportionately high numbers of African-Americans. However, the damage has compounded beyond individuals and their families to affect African-American communities as a whole.

African-American children are over-represented in juvenile hall and family court cases, and as a result, they are removed from their families in droves, and placed in the federal system. This is due to two reasons.

First, the high incarceration rate has not ignored families: mothers and fathers are incarcerated as well. This leads to a lack of a parental (mother or father incarcerated) figure to provide a good role model and stabilize a household. The impacts on their children are severe. African-American youths are becoming highly involved in gangs in order to generate income for their families lacking a primary breadwinner; with the War on Drugs having made the drug trade lucrative, it is a far more profitable for them to work for a dangerous drug gang than at a safe entry-level job. The second-hand consequences of this are African-American youths dropping out of school, being tried for drug-related crime, and acquiring AIDS at disparate levels.

Second, the high incarceration rate has led to the juvenile justice system and family courts to use race as a negative heuristic in trials, leading to a reinforcing effect: as more African-Americans are incarcerated, the more the heuristic is enforced in the eyes of the courts. This contributes to yet higher imprisonment rates among African-American children, and tearing apart already damaged families.

The high imprisonment rate has also led the police to target African-American communities at disparately high levels of surveillance, invading privacy rights of individuals without probable cause, and ultimately breeding a distrust for police among African-American communities. High numbers of African American arrests and charges of possession show that although the majority of drug users in the United States are white, AfricanAmericans are the largest group being targeted as the root of the problem. A distrust of the police in African-American communities seems like a logical feeling. Harboring these emotions can lead to a lack of will to contact the police in case of an emergency by members of African-American communities, ultimately leaving many people unprotected. Disproportionate arrests in African-American communities for drug-related offenses has not only spread fear but also perpetuated a deep distrust for government and what some call racist drug enforcement policy.

Women of Color

The War on Drugs also plays a negative role in the lives of women of color. In 1997, of women in state prisons for drug-related crimes, forty-four percent were Hispanic, thirty-nine percent were black, and twenty-three percent were white, quite different from the racial make up shown in percentages of the United States as a whole. Statistics in England, Wales, and Canada are similar. Women of color who are implicated in drug crimes are “generally poor, uneducated, and unskilled; have impaired mental and physical health; are victims of physical and sexual abuse and mental cruelty; are single mothers with children; lack familial support; often have no prior convictions; and are convicted for a small quantity of drugs”.

Additionally, these women typically have an economic attachment to, or fear of, male drug traffickers, creating a power paradigm that sometimes forces their involvement in drug-related crimes. Though there are programs to help them, women of color are usually unable to take advantage of social welfare institutions in America due to regulations. For example, women’s access to methadone, which suppresses cravings for drugs such as heroin, is restricted by state clinics that set appointment times for women to receive their treatment. If they miss their appointment, (which is likely: drug-addicted women may not have access to transportation and lead chaotic lives), they are denied medical care critical to their recovery. Additionally, while women of color are offered jobs as a form of government support, these jobs often do not have childcare, rendering the job impractical for mothers, who cannot leave their children at home alone.

See also

• Race and crime
• Race and crime in the United States
• United States incarceration rate
• Methamphetamine and Native Americans
• Statistics of incarcerated African-American males
• Race in the United States criminal justice system
• Racial profiling in the United States

Further reading

Books

• The New Jim Crow (2010) by Michelle Alexander www.newjimcrow.com ISBN= 978-1595581037

News

• Webb, Gary. "War on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans." (Archive) San Jose Mercury News. August 20, 1996.