Pubdate: Sat, 05 Aug 2006
Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)
Copyright: 2006 St. Paul Pioneer Press
Contact:  http://www.twincities.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/379
Author: Sara Solovitch, Public Access Journalism
Note: Sara Solovitch is a freelance journalist and former Knight 
Ridder Newspapers reporter.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?159 (Drug Courts)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

DRUG COURTS, TREATMENT PROGRAMS CHIP AWAY AT NUMBER OF IMPRISONED BLACK MALES

As a longtime crack addict from Lexington, Ky., George Moorman was 
one more black male being churned through America's criminal justice 
system until one day in 1997, when he came before a drug court judge 
for stealing a camcorder.

"He decided to put me in the drug court program - he told me I was 
too intelligent to go to the penitentiary," recalls Moorman, who, at 
54, just earned a doctorate in educational psychology from the 
University of Kentucky. "I'd already made the decision to change. But 
saying you're going to make a change doesn't mean you're going to do 
it. You have to have the support."

Finding that support is difficult under the mass of statistics that 
have piled up in the 26 years since America declared a war on drugs. 
Increasingly harsher sentencing mandates have stacked the numbers 
against African American men, resulting in prisons becoming the 
largest treatment centers in the country.

Today, African Americans comprise 62 percent of imprisoned drug 
offenders, though they are only 13 percent of the national 
population. One out of every 115 black males enters prison each year 
on a felony drug crime, compared with one of every 1,150 white men, 
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And black youths are 
admitted to state correction facilities for drug offenses at 48 times 
the rate of white youths, according to a report by the Building 
Blocks for Youth Initiative.

"There's an attitude of hopelessness and despair that many blacks 
have as a result of unemployment," says Arthur L. Burnett Sr., 
executive director of the National African American Drug Policy 
Coalition. "The only way we can cope with it is by starting with 
youngsters in the third grade, and that's what we're doing."

The NAADPC, an umbrella group of 23 professional organizations, is 
spearheading an educational response with a 10-year goal to reduce 
the number of black inmates and double the number of black 
professionals. Among its key plans: an internship program to identify 
gifted eighth-graders in specific subject areas and pair them with 
black mentors in law, medicine, engineering and other fields.

"We're saying, let's go back to the ideas of Booker T. Washington," 
says Burnett, the first African American magistrate, now retired, 
from the U.S. Magistrate in Washington, D.C. "Don't let's wait for 
government handouts. Let the black community come together in a 
spirit of self-reliance."

Other groups are looking and listening more closely to create or fix 
programs to chip away at the numbers.

In Santa Cruz, Calif., a review of court records showed that minority 
juveniles were significantly more likely than white offenders to miss 
their early morning court hearings. Interviewers found most of the 
black and Hispanic youths were traveling to the courthouse from 
Watsonville, a 45-minute drive from the south. In response, a new 
courtroom was opened there and the failure-to-show rate dropped.

In northeast Philadelphia, The Bridge, a residential treatment and 
continuing care program, embraces the participation of families, 
churches and schools to "resocialize" African-American teenagers 
who've been thrown out of other juvenile justice programs.

"One of the biggest things we look for is trauma," explains director 
Angelo Adson, adding that 80 percent of the youths have experienced 
some significant form of it.

"As a result, most of them have some kind of post traumatic stress 
disorder," he says. "Yet the majority are diagnosed with conduct 
disorder - and it's exacerbated when they go into a juvenile justice 
facility," where they typically spend 200 or more days before being 
referred for treatment. For their white peers, referral comes in a 
mere 40 days.

Says Adson, "That disparity speaks volumes about how kids are evaluated."

Hundreds of studies have seized on explanations for the disparity in 
treatment. But most start in the courtroom, with the simple judicial 
distinction between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. The two drugs 
contain the same active ingredient; the only chemical difference is 
that crack is mixed with baking soda and then heated. It is sold in 
smaller, cheaper quantities and widely regarded as a "black" drug.

The biggest difference is what happens when dealers come before a 
judge. A five-gram sale of crack automatically means a minimum 
five-year sentence, but a dealer in powder cocaine has to sell 100 
times that amount - or 500 grams - to get the same sentence.

The results? In 1986, before the enactment of federal mandatory 
minimum sentencing for crack cocaine offenses, the average federal 
drug sentence for African Americans was 11 percent higher than that 
of whites. Just four years later, that number was 49 percent higher.

"It's so much easier to arrest a crack dealer on the street rather 
than someone in a business suit who's selling pot and cocaine," says 
Kurt Schmoke, former Baltimore mayor and current dean of Howard 
University's Law School, who is leading a legislative effort to untie 
judges' hands and allow them to sentence drug offenders on a 
case-by-case basis.

Widening the gap is the creation of drug-free zones - typically 
1,000-foot perimeters around schools, public housing complexes, parks 
and playgrounds, in which the penalties for drug offenses are 
significantly harsher. Whole inner-city neighborhoods may qualify as 
drug-free zones. In Newark, N.J., for example, drug-free zone laws 
cover three-quarters of the city and require judges to lay down 
mandatory minimum sentencing terms.

The ramifications reach far beyond prison. A federal drug conviction 
prevents an offender from obtaining future education loans and 
work-study grants, and bans parents from receiving food stamps and 
welfare benefits. It has disenfranchised 1.4 million African-American 
men from permanently voting - a rate seven times the national average.

"It has so many debilitating consequences that it is 
counterproductive to the goal of trying to rid us of a drug problem," 
Schmoke says. "Rather than being punished for that one act, it's an 
ongoing handicap that prevents you from being rehabilitated. And it's 
driven mostly by politics rather than science."

Recent research suggests that uneven incarceration rates may even 
help explain disproportionately high rates of AIDS in the black 
community. According to the latest statistics from 2004, black men 
and women accounted for 20,965 AIDS cases, compared with 12,013 for 
whites and 8,672 for Hispanics.

"We're looking at a three-headed monster: addiction, AIDS and crime," 
Schmoke says. "You have to have a good public health policy to go 
after AIDS and addiction. Otherwise, you're just churning the same 
people out over and over again."

With the foresight of one judge and the support of a strong drug 
court program, the cycle has stopped for George Moorman, who vowed 
that he would redress every arrest and negative mark on his record 
with something positive.

"When I came to drug court, they were so strict, they gave me so much 
to do, that I couldn't think of doing anything else. I decided to 
trust them with my life, basically. They said, 'Go to a meeting.' I 
went to a meeting. They said, 'Call in every day, three days a week.' 
I called."

Something clicked. " I realized I was 44 years old, short, black and 
handsome - and I hadn't done anything that mattered to me, my family, 
or society. ... And right now I am in my house looking at my walls 
and they're filled with certificates, outstanding achievement awards, 
dean's awards, degrees and awards for community service.

"It's like some unfinished business," he says. "You have to clean up 
before you can move forward. I brought drugs into my community. By me 
using drugs I caused someone else to use drugs. I gloried in it. I 
sanctioned it. I had to go back and clean up what I'd messed up."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman