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"Racial Inequity and Drug Arrests"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this editorial in today's New York Times.  Here are snippets:The United States prison system keeps marking shameful milestones. In late February, the Pew Center on the States released a report showing that more than 1 in 100 American adults are presently behind bars ? an astonishingly high rate of incarceration notably skewed along racial lines. One in nine black men aged 20 to 34 are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men. Now, two new reports, by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch, have turned a critical spotlight on law enforcement?s overwhelming focus on drug use in low-income urban areas. These reports show large disparities in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, despite roughly equal rates of illegal drug use...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 10, 2008 (boomark / email).