NCJ Number
183785
Date Published
May 2000
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This report documents extreme racial disparities in the incarceration of drug law offenders, i.e., persons whose most serious conviction offense is a nonviolent drug law violation.
Abstract
The high rates of incarceration for all drug offenders are cause for concern, but the grossly disparate rates at which blacks and whites are sent to prison for drug offenses must raise a question about the fairness and equity of drug law enforcement across the country and underscore the need for reforms that would minimize these disparities without sacrificing legitimate drug control objectives. Prison is a legitimate criminal sanction, but it should be used sensibly, justly, parsimoniously, and with due consideration for the principles of proportionality and respect for human dignity required by international human rights law. The incarceration of hundreds of thousands of low-level, nonviolent drug offenders shows indifference to such consideration. Moreover, many drug offenders receive egregiously long prison sentences, particularly because of the prevalence of mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses that do not permit judges to calibrate sentences to the conduct and level of culpability of each defendant. It is difficult to assess the extent to which racial bias or sheer indifference to the fate of black communities has contributed to the development and persistence of the Nation's punitive anti-drug strategies. Cocaine use by white Americans in all social classes increased in the late 1970's and early 1980's, but it did not engender the "orgy of media and political attention" that catalyzed the war on drugs in the mid-1980's, when smokable cocaine in the form of crack spread throughout low-income minority neighborhoods that were already viewed as dangerous. Even though far more whites used both powder cocaine and crack cocaine than blacks, the image of the drug offender that has dominated media stories is of a black man slouching in an alley rather than a white man in his home. The first step in remedying such racial disparity in the war on drugs is to reassess the current strategies for fighting drugs. Each State and the Federal Government should subject current and proposed drug policies to strict scrutiny and modify those that cause significant unwarranted racial disparities. Eight specific recommendations are offered for drug-control reforms by the Federal and State governments. 19 tables, 9 figures, and appended study methodology