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Reports by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch detail persistently high arrest and convictions for African Americans in drug-related cases

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

May 6, 2008 Reports Find Racial Gap in Drug Arrests By ERIK ECKHOLM NY Times (Report URLs at the bottom of this email.) More than two decades after President Ronald Reagan escalated the war on drugs, arrests for drug sales or, more often, drug possession are still rising. And despite public debate and limited efforts to reduce them, large disparities persist in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, even though the two races use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates. Two new reports, issued Monday by the Sentencing Project in Washington and by Human Rights Watch in New York, both say the racial disparities reflect, in large part, an overwhelming focus of law enforcement on drug use in low-income urban areas, with arrests and incarceration the main weapon...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on May 06, 2008 (boomark / email).