Pubdate: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 Source: Philadelphia Daily News (PA) Copyright: 2013 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. Contact: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/about/feedback/ Website: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/339 POT-ENTIAL BIAS Why Do Cops Arrest More Blacks Than Whites for Possession? AN EXPLOSIVE report by the American Civil Liberties Union about the racial disparity in marijuana arrests in the United States essentially confirms a new category of crime: smoking weed while black. The report, released last week, said that while whites and blacks use marijuana in roughly the same amounts, blacks are almost four times more likely to be arrested for possession than whites. The disparity is even worse in Pennsylvania, where African-Americans are more than five times more likely to be arrested than whites. That puts Pennsylvania among the country's worst offenders in racial disparity in marijuana-possession arrest rates. While marijuana use is undergoing a revolutionary change in acceptability, with a majority of Americans now favoring decriminalization, prosecution has dramatically veered in the opposite direction - with enormous consequences for African-Americans. According to the ACLU report, marijuana arrests now account for more than half of all drug arrests in the United States, and nearly 90 percent of those arrests were for simple possession. In 2010, according to the report, there were 300,000 more marijuana arrests than for all violent crimes. The cost of this futile "War on Drugs" is enormous, and not just in millions of misspent taxpayer dollars. The report cites the "collateral consequences" of a prison record for marijuana: ineligibility for public housing and student financial aid; few prospects for employment; potential loss of child custody and immigration rights; and a criminal record that often leads to more severe sentences in the case of another arrest. These circumstances can consign hundreds of thousands of individuals to marginal lives with little hope of regaining a foothold in mainstream society - all for possessing marijuana. The report reinforces the thesis of the best-selling book, The New Jim Crow, in which author Michelle Alexander claims that the racially perpetrated "War on Drugs" has relegated ordinary African-Americans to a racial underclass. This new caste, she says, is denied many fundamental rights that seemingly were won in the civil-rights struggle - such as the right to vote, since felons in many states are banned from participating in elections. The proposition that blacks are subject to unequal enforcement of drug laws isn't universally accepted, of course. Some law-enforcement officials and politicians claim that blacks are arrested more often because they commit crime more often. It's also true that some people dismiss anything reported by the ACLU as leftwing ideology designed to promote an agenda - in this case, to decriminalize marijuana. But consider this: In 2010, in Philadelphia, 82 percent of individuals arrested for possession of marijuana were black. Does that make sense in a city with so many college campuses filled with white students? Or is it the result of policies such as "stop and frisk" in minority neighborhoods that inevitably snare drug users? We'll leave the discussion about legalizing marijuana for another day. But the methodically compiled statistics in the ACLU report are too jarring to ignore. No matter how you feel about decriminalizing marijuana, there's no justification for implementing the law in such a way that makes it illegal to smoke while black. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom