Locking up Blacks is No Solution
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Phillip Morris, Plain Dealer Associate Editor
March 5, 2002
Having completed a four-month tour of duty as foreman of a Cuyahoga County grand jury last month, the Rev. Marvin McMickle publicly described the process as having an “apartheid feel to it.”
McMickle, a thoughtful man, deliberately minimized the horrors of apartheid with such irresponsible language and at the same time slighted all of those citizens who take their turns serving as grand jurors. But how does one begrudge an important community leader his honest impression or reaction?
Well, for one, the impression could have been informed. His wasn’t. But the letter McMickle wrote to Richard McMonagle, presiding judge of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, containing his observations remains somewhat instructive and might contribute to a desperately needed community (and national) conversation.
He wrote:
“My general impression of the grand jury process had an apartheid feel to it, with largely white enforcement officers bringing evidence to largely white grand jury panels to issue indictments of largely African-American and Hispanic defendants. I know this is the perception that exists in the wider black community, and as long as that perception is allowed to stand, there will be suspicion and resentment toward the entire criminal justice apparatus.”Setting aside McMickle’s stated concerns about the dearth of African-American assistant county prosecutors and the lack of drug intervention programs – an observation refuted by McMonagle and by County Prosecutor Bill Mason – McMickle is on to something much more important.
And that is the continued devastation America’s “war on drugs” is wreaking on African American communities. The rate at which young black men are convicted and incarcerated is simply shocking.
The numbers tell a horrifying story of communities that are crumbling at the core because an enormous percentage of their young males are being socially and politically aborted. These numbers affect us all because they come with tremendous social and financial consequences.
Consider these figures, compiled recently by Human Rights Watch (drug-related offenses drive these statistics):
Nationwide black men are incarcerated at nearly 10 times the rate of white men.
Blacks comprise 13 percent of the national population but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison.
Nine percent of all black adults are under some form of correctional supervision (jail, prison probation or parole), compared with 2 percent of whites.
One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 was jailed, imprisoned, on parole or on probation in 1995.
Thirteen percent of the black adult male population has lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws.
African-Americans comprise 11 percent of Ohio’s population but make up 73 percent of those incarcerated on drug charges.
What do these figures really mean? This is where the conversation gets exceedingly tricky.
Shortly after his sermon on Sunday, McMickle asked me rhetorically whether the black, inner-city crack dealer or user was more likely to be arrested and eventually incarcerated than the suburban white offender.
The answer appears to be obvious:
African-American communities, which were being rocked by open-market drug trafficking and gun violence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, called for police and political help. The result was the passage of tough laws that could send low-level dealers away for minuscule amounts of drugs.
The laws have worked – too well. In some ways, the neighborhoods are safer. But in other invisible ways, the enforcement of drug laws has wreaked more far-reaching havoc in the underlying structure of black communities than the crack violence did at its zenith.
So what is the solution?
It must start with the squelching of the appetite for drug consumption and trafficking. This is not a call for legalization, but the profit motive must be directly addressed. Most young men who sell crack-cocaine don’t use it themselves, studies have shown. They merely profit from it and sabotage their own communities.
The answer is not, unfortunately, as easy as sweeping black men into the nearest penitentiary. His language and uninformed assumptions aside, McMickle has performed an important public service.
Morris is an associate editor of The Plain Dealer’s editorial pages.