America’s way of justice favors whites over blacks
Newsday.com
March 2, 2008
This article comments on the racial patterns of enforcement and imprisonment in the United States.
Another recent study revealed a stark contrast in the way blacks and whites are jailed for drug offenses, which account for a high percentage of prison populations. The Justice Policy Institute studied drug arrests in 198 of the largest U.S. counties, making up over half the nation’s population. All but two of these counties incarcerated blacks at a higher rate than whites. Suffolk County, where my wife and I raised three children, sent black drug offenders to prison at a rate some 36 times that of whites.
Such a shameful, national disparity in incarceration rates, according to the institute, occurred even with a pattern showing no appreciable difference between whites and blacks in illegal drug possession, use and sale. Some 8.5 percent of whites were found to use illicit drugs in ‘02, compared to 9.7 percent for blacks. Despite this similarity, African-Americans, the report found, were “admitted to prison for drug offenses [at] nearly 10 times the rate for whites.”