I specifically said violent crimes, I believe.
The statistics are very, very clear on the discrepancy there.
I could entertain the assertion that the discrepancy in drug crime is due to lack of enforcement among whites, and therefore an illusory statistic....
EXCUSE ME?! You
could entertain the assertion that the drug war is racially motivated? That's not an assertion, that's not something you
entertain, that's an objective fact. You're in law school for god's sake, you don't get an excuse for not knowing this shit. You have a moral responsibility to understand this, the drug war is the cause of one of the largest increases in racially directed mass incarceration in human history and you're about to enter into the profession directly responsible for enforcing it. You were immediately able to quote from a statistician's blog to support your argument about blacks killing more than whites but yet you've been incapable of deciphering that the drug war is about race up to this point? That has to be some selective ignorance on your part, so let me provide a tiny primer on the issue which doesn't even get into how the drug war fosters and ensures minority Americans become trapped in pit of inescapable poverty and legalized discrimination. Here's a thought experiment though: Why are DUIs only a misdemeanor but drug crimes a felony which deprive you of the right to vote, public housing and welfare benefits, and require you to permanently notify employers of your felon status?
In 2006, 1 in every 14 black men were behind bars, compared with 1 in 106 white men. For young black men, the disparity is even worse. 1 in 9 black men between the ages of twenty and thirty five were behind bars.
On the Drug War Driving Mass Incarceration:
In 2009, nearly half of federal prisoners (48%) were incarcerated on drug charges. Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000 [1]. About half a million people are in prison or jail today for a drug offense compared to 41,100 in 1980, a 1,100 percent increase [2]. Drug arrests have tripled since 1980 and more than 31 million people have been arrested for drug offenses since the drug war began [3]. There are more people in prisons and jails today
just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for
all reasons in 1980 [4]. The vast majority of those arrested were not charged with serious offenses; four out of five arrests were for possession. Arrests for marijuana possession accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s. Moreover, most people in state prison for drug offenses have
no history of violence or significant selling activity [5].
On the Drug War Being Racially Directed:
Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that, in 7 states, African Americans constituted 80-90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison [3]. In at least 15 states, blacks were admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate 20 to 57 times greater than that of white men. On a nationwide average, 56 percent of drug offenders in state prisons were black and the rate of drug admissions to state prison for black men was 13 times greater than the rate for white men [4]. Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino [8].
People of all races use and sell illegal drugs at very similar rates [10]. Other studies suggest whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than people of color [11]. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in 2000 that white students use crack cocaine at 8 times the rate of black students and use heroin at 7 times the rate of black students, with nearly identical figures for marijuana use [12]. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse also reported that white youth age 12-17 were more than a third more likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth [13]. Studies also consistently indicate that drug markets, like American society generally, reflect our nation's racial and socioeconomic boundaries. Whites tend to sell to whites; blacks to blacks, students to students, rural to rural, urban to urban[15].
Citations:
Drug War Driving Mass Incarceration:
1: Marc, Mauer,
Race to Incarcerate, rev. ed. (New York: The New Press, 2006), 33.
2: Marc Mauer and Ryan King,
A 25 Year Quagmire: The "War on Drugs" and Its Impact on American Society (Washington DC: Sentencing Project, 2007), 2.
3: Ibid, 3.
4: Testimony of Marc Mauer, Executive Director of the Sentencing Project, Prepared for House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, 111th Cong.,
Hearing on Unfariness in Federal COcaine Sentencing: Is it time to crack the 100 to 1 disparity? May 21, 2009, 2.
5: Mauer and King,
A 25 Year Quagmire, 2-3.
Drug War Racially Directed:
3: Human Rights Watch,
Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs, HRW Reports, vol 12, no. 2 (May 2000).
4: Ibid.
8: Marc Mauer and Ryan S. King,
Schools and Prisons: Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education
10: See, e.g., U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,
Summary of Findings from the 2000 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, NHSDA series H-13, DHHHS pub. no. SMA 01-3549 (Rockville, MD: 2001);
Results from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, NSDUH series H-22, DHHS pub. no SMA 03-3836 (2003);
Results from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, NSDUH series H-34, DHHS pub. no. SMA 08-4343 (2007); and Marc Mauer and Ryan S. King,
A 25 Year Quagmire, 19.
11: See, e.g., Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickman, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report, US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prvention (Washington, DC: 2006); Lloyd D. Johnson, Patrick M. O'Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulenberg,
Monitoring the Future, National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2006, vol. 1, Secondary Schools Students, US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH pub. no. 07-6205 (Bethesda, MD: 2007), 32; Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O'Malley, and Jerald G. Bachman,
Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use: Overview of Key Findings 2002, US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH pub. no. 03-5374 (Bethesda, MD: 2003)
12: National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Monitoring the Future, National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-1999, vol. 1, Secondary School Students (Washington, DC: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2000).
13: US Department of Health,
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 1999 (Washington, DC: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies, 2000), table G, p. 71,
www.samhsa.gov/statistics/statistics.html
15: K. Jack Riley,
Crack, Powder Cocaine and Heroin: Drug Purchase and Use Patterns in Six U.S. Cities (Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1997), see also George Rengert and James LeBeau "The Impact of Ethnic Boundaries on the Spatial Choice of Illegal Drug Dealers" presented at American Society of Criminology, Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 13, 2007.
