|  Teiresias | May 6, 7:19am | More than two decades after President Ronald Reagan escalated the war on drugs, arrests for drug sales or, more often, drug possession are still rising. And despite public debate and limited efforts to reduce them, large disparities persist in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, even though the two races use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates.
Two new reports, issued Monday by the Sentencing Project in Washington and by Human Rights Watch in New York, both say the racial disparities reflect, in large part, an overwhelming focus of law enforcement on drug use in low-income urban areas, with arrests and incarceration the main weapon.
But they note that the murderous crack-related urban violence of the 1980s, which spawned the war on drugs, has largely subsided, reducing the rationale for a strategy that has sowed mistrust in the justice system among many blacks.
In 2006, according to federal data, drug-related arrests climbed to 1.89 million, up from 1.85 million in 2005 and 581,000 in 1980.
More than four in five of the arrests were for possession of banned substances, rather than for their sale or manufacture. Four in 10 of all drug arrests were for marijuana possession, according to the latest F.B.I. data.
Apart from crowding prisons, one result is a devastating impact on the lives of black men: they are nearly 12 times as likely to be imprisoned for drug convictions as adult white men, according to the Human Rights Watch report.
State-by-state image
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Sponsor |  Journey | May 6, 7:21am | | Here's an idea- Stop doing drugs. |
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| | | italian-scallion | May 6, 7:24am | 2.) Legal drugs or illegal drugs? What's the difference?
1.) I sleep safe at night knowing those murderous potheads are locked safe behind bars where they can harm no one. |
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| | Teiresias | May 6, 7:25am | | The point of the story is there is a racial disparity for arrests, despite the same level of usage. Click the image. In some states it's a 20:1 ratio. |
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Sponsor | | MJ-Brutus | May 6, 7:27am | Legalize drugs. Right now thousands of inmates are being released early in dozens of states and mandatory sentencing laws revised due to serious state budget deficits.
Legalizing cannabis would practically balance the budget in the USA with appropriate taxation and freeing law enforcement (& courts, jails) for serious stuff.
1. yeah, really shocking in a non-racist country like the USA... |
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Sponsor | | Millerbull | May 6, 7:34am | fer reals on the legalization of the reefer, or at the very least the decriminalization. what a waste of lives, money, time, resources...
On the disparity of arrests, not surprising. the deck is stacked against certain portions of society, and is stacked even further against individuals corralled into our bloated justice system through a minor drug offense.
here's an idea: stop wasting tax dollars on stupid stuff. |
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Sponsor | | sagemark | May 6, 8:14am | Is it a racial gap or an intelligence gap? I see more blacks riding down the road with the windows down smoking a blunt. I see groups of blacks hanging outside smoking more than other groups. I see more blacks making more frequent trips to known points of distribution than whites or mexicans. I see more blacks stoned or drunk in public than whites. I see more blacks than whites driving with improper maintenance on their vehicle's which lead to more likely traffic stops. I'm guessing they are more likely to carry their stash with them as they are not able to trust the ones they be's staying with. Anybody that makes the same kind of poor decisions are going to get busted too, but that is not the pattern that I see others following.
For blacks to make up a smaller portion of the population they fuck up in spades. It's not the color of their skin, it's the content of their character. |
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Sponsor | | stringo | May 6, 8:23am | So you are suggesting that black people are too stupid to hide the fact that they are doing drugs and therefore get arrested more?
Or please tell me I misunderstood. Please. |
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Sponsor | | sagemark | May 6, 8:53am | | No misunderstanding. I question whether it is intelligence or race that leads to more arrest. |
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Sponsor | | MJ-Brutus | May 6, 8:59am | | Sheesh. In the USA blacks make up a larger percentage of those with poor educations and very low income. People with few resources. I bet if you looked at the whites getting drug convictions that they too are mostly at the bottom of the food chain. |
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