Pubdate: Wed,  6 Jun 2001
Source: Virginian-Pilot (VA)
Copyright: 2001, The Virginian-Pilot
Contact:  http://www.pilotonline.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/483
Author: Bill Sizemore, The Virginian-Pilot

BLACKS IMPRISONED AT RATE OUT OF PROPORTION TO DRUG USE

The chances of being swept up by the war on drugs, the principal factor 
behind Virginia's prison boom, have a lot to do with skin color.

It is a national phenomenon for which there is no universally accepted 
explanation. Theories range from the relative ease of apprehension to 
outright racism.

But the statistics are undeniable: African-Americans are arrested, 
prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned on drug charges in numbers vastly out 
of proportion to their use of illegal drugs.

Reaction to the numbers tends to run along racial lines. Several Hampton 
Roads law enforcers and lawmakers expressed surprise or dismay over the 
huge racial disparity in drug-law enforcement. But black area officials 
said the pattern is common knowledge in the black community.

``That's one of the glaring inconsistencies in the war on drugs,'' said 
Del. Jerrauld C. Jones, D-Norfolk. ``It's only fought on one front, and 
that front happens most often to be the African-American community.''

Terming the phenomenon a ``national crisis,'' Jones said: ``We must 
recognize it, we must identify it. We must not be afraid to talk about it.''

Although Virginia's population is three-quarters white, its prison 
population is two-thirds black. Black Virginians are seven times more 
likely to be locked up than whites, according to U.S. Justice Department data.

The disparity is particularly noticeable when it comes to drugs.

Drug offenses, especially those involving cocaine, have accounted for far 
and away the fastest-growing share of prison admissions in recent decades.

National drug use surveys show that far more whites than blacks use illicit 
drugs.

Six times as many whites as blacks, for instance, reported using cocaine 
during the past year in the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse 
conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

State-by-state estimates produced by HHS indicate that drug use in Virginia 
mirrors the national pattern. Yet, 60 to 65 percent of cocaine felons in 
Virginia prisons are black.

A Virginian-Pilot analysis of court records in South Hampton Roads over an 
18-month period, from July 1, 1997, to Dec. 31, 1998, found that 71 percent 
of drug cases were brought against black defendants. The region's 
population is 30 percent black.

Drug use, imprisonment rates inconsistent Contrary to the popular notion of 
a crack cocaine ``epidemic'' among blacks, crack use has remained well 
below 1 percent of the U.S. population since the phenomenon was first 
measured in 1988 -- and the majority of crack users are white, according to 
the drug use surveys. Virginia is one of seven states where, because of 
felony disenfranchisement laws, one in four black men is permanently 
ineligible to vote.

``Urban black Americans have borne the brunt of the war on drugs,'' wrote 
Michael Tonry, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, in his 1995 
book ``Malign Neglect -- Race, Crime and Punishment in America.''

``They have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned at 
increasing rates since the early 1980s, and grossly out of proportion to 
their numbers in the general population or among drug users.''

Tonry hypothesizes that drug activity tends to result in arrests more often 
in black neighborhoods than white neighborhoods because it is more visible 
and therefore easier for police to detect. ``More of the routine activities 
of life, including retail drug dealing, occurs on the streets and alleys in 
poor neighborhoods,'' he wrote.

Jones agrees with that explanation.

``Where does the enforcement happen?'' he said. ``It happens in the central 
cities, in the public housing projects, in the ghettos, in the low-income 
areas where the police have an easy time to enforce it. It's easier to 
enforce it in the public housing project than it is to enforce it in Lago 
Mar.''

It's like ``shooting fish in a barrel,'' Jones said.

And the disparity is multiplied at the trial stage, where black defendants 
are more likely to be represented by overworked, underpaid, court-appointed 
attorneys, said Del. Lionell Spruill Sr., D-Chesapeake.

``The playing ground is not level for the `have-nots,' '' Spruill said.. It 
was not always this way.

In 1960, two-thirds of those admitted to federal and state prisons were 
white, according to data Tonry collected for his book. But the white/black 
ratio steadily narrowed over the next three decades until, in the late 
'80s, blacks moved into the majority.

As late as 1983, 62 percent of drug offenders admitted to Virginia prisons 
were white. By 1989, the ratio had more than reversed: 65 percent were black.

The statistics came as a surprise to many public officials contacted for 
this report.

``I was unaware of that,'' said Sen. Richard J. Holland, D-Isle of Wight. 
``. . . I'm surprised at those statistics.''

``It's disturbing,'' said Chesapeake Commonwealth's Attorney Randall D. 
Smith. ``It should be looked at to see why, because it shouldn't be 
happening.''

``I'm unaware of any deviation based on race,'' said Sen. Kenneth W. 
Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, chairman of the Virginia State Crime Commission. 
``If that's the case, then the people who are being punished are being 
punished because of behavior, not because of race.''

Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney Chuck Griffith said race plays no role in 
his office's approach to drug prosecutions. ``My staff doesn't look to see 
whether somebody's black or white when we take their case to court,'' he 
said. ``What we look at is whether there's any evidence that they have 
committed a crime.''

Black politicians and academics expressed less surprise.

``A policy decision has been made by someone that this is the way the law 
enforcement community will expend its resources and its manpower,'' said 
Del. William P. Robinson Jr., D-Norfolk. ``It's part and parcel of the 
racial profiling issue.''

``It's a serious concern to some of us,'' said Sen. Yvonne B. Miller, 
D-Norfolk. ``I think there's still a vestige of feeling that we have 
disposable people in Virginia, and unfortunately they tend to be 
African-Americans. I think you can trace it all the way back to 1619.''

That was the year the first black slaves were brought to Virginia.

Manning Marable, a professor of history and political science and director 
of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia 
University, addressed the topic in his column ``Along the Color Line'' last 
fall.

``For two centuries, the black community was confronted with the 
totalitarianism of slavery,'' he wrote. ``. . . Today, the new totalitarian 
mode of racial domination has become the prison-industrial complex, an 
ever-expanding archipelago of prisons across the American countryside.''

Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the nation's drug czar, told a Hampton 
Roads audience last month that most Americans' perceptions of drug abusers 
are far removed from reality.

``The lowest rate of drug use in American society are African Americans, 
who use less alcohol, cigarettes, heroin, crack cocaine, et cetera than 
other racial groups,'' McCaffrey told the World Affairs Council of Greater 
Hampton Roads.

``I mention that to you because all of us are dealing in our minds with 
denial,'' he said.

Drug war may have hurt more than helped Some critics have raised the 
alarming prospect that the war on drugs has had the perverse effect of 
worsening, not alleviating, crime in the minority community. ``There is 
growing evidence that the massive increases in incarceration, particularly 
for drug and other nonviolent crimes, have led to a misallocation of scarce 
prison resources and may be undermining families and communities, thereby 
contributing to crime problems,'' William J. Sabol and James P. Lynch wrote 
in a 1997 Urban Institute report. ``This is especially true in black, 
inner-city communities.''

The National Criminal Justice Commission, a group that advocates 
alternatives to incarceration, warned in 1996: ``In some urban areas, so 
many young men are removed by the criminal justice system that it is 
increasingly difficult to maintain the two-parent family as a bulwark 
against crime.''
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom