Pubdate: Tue, 04 Jun 2013
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Ian Urbina

BLACKS ARE SINGLED OUT FOR MARIJUANA ARRESTS, FEDERAL DATA SUGGESTS

WASHINGTON - Black Americans were nearly four times as likely than 
whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, 
even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according 
to new federal data. Enlarge This Image

This disparity had grown steadily from a decade before, and in some 
states, including Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, blacks were around 
eight times as likely to be arrested.

During the same period, public attitudes toward marijuana softened 
and a number of states decriminalized its use. But about half of all 
drug arrests in 2011 were on marijuana-related charges, roughly the 
same portion as in 2010.

Advocates for the legalization of marijuana have criticized the Obama 
administration for having vocally opposed state legalization efforts 
and for taking a more aggressive approach than the Bush 
administration in closing medical marijuana dispensaries and 
prosecuting their owners in some states, especially Montana and California.

The new data, however, offers a more nuanced picture of marijuana 
enforcement on the state level. Drawn from police records from all 50 
states and the District of Columbia, the report is the most 
comprehensive review of marijuana arrests by race and by county and 
is part of a report being released this week by the American Civil 
Liberties Union. Much of the data was also independently reviewed for 
The New York Times by researchers at Stanford University.

"We found that in virtually every county in the country, police have 
wasted taxpayer money enforcing marijuana laws in a racially biased 
manner," said Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the A.C.L.U.'s 
Criminal Law Reform Project and the lead author of the report.

During President Obama's first three years in office, the arrest rate 
for marijuana possession was about 5 percent higher than the average 
rate under President George W. Bush. And in 2011, marijuana use grew 
to about 7 percent, up from 6 percent in 2002 among Americans who 
said that they had used the drug in the past 30 days. Also, a 
majority of Americans in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in 
March supported legalizing marijuana.

Though there has been a shift in state laws and in popular attitudes 
about the drug, black and white Americans have experienced the change 
very differently.

"It's pretty clear that law enforcement practices are not keeping 
pace with public opinion and state policies," said Mona Lynch, a 
professor of criminology, law and society at the University of 
California, Santa Cruz.

She added that 13 states have in recent years passed or expanded laws 
decriminalizing marijuana use and that 18 states now allow it for 
medicinal use.

In the past year, Colorado and Washington State have legalized 
marijuana, leaving the Justice Department to decide how to respond to 
those laws because marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

The cost of drug enforcement has grown steadily over the past decade. 
In 2010, states spent an estimated $3.6 billion enforcing marijuana 
possession laws, a 30 percent increase from 10 years earlier. The 
increase came as many states, faced with budget shortfalls, were 
saving money by using alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent 
offenders. During the same period, arrests for most other types of 
crime steadily dropped.

Researchers said the growing racial disparities in marijuana arrests 
were especially striking because they were so consistent even across 
counties with large or small minority populations.

The A.C.L.U. report said that one possible reason that the racial 
disparity in arrests remained despite shifting state policies toward 
the drug is that police practices are slow to change. Federal 
programs like the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program 
continue to provide incentives for racial profiling, the report said, 
by including arrest numbers in its performance measures when 
distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to local law enforcement 
each year.

Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychology professor at the University of 
California, Los Angeles, said that police departments, partly driven 
by a desire to increase their drug arrest statistics, can concentrate 
on minority or poorer neighborhoods to meet numerical goals, focusing 
on low-level offenses that are easier, quicker and cheaper than 
investigating serious felony crimes.

"Whenever federal funding agencies encourage law enforcement to meet 
numerical arrest goals instead of public safety goals, it will likely 
promote stereotype-based policing and we can expect these sorts of 
racial gaps," Professor Goff said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom