Legal Commentary

New Report: Blacks Disproportionately Busted for Drugs

By Jeralyn

Human Rights Watch released a new report this week,
Decades of Disparity, Drug Arrests and Race in the United States (pdf.) The report analyzes the arrest statistics released by the FBI.

Adult African Americans were arrested on drug charges at rates that were 2.8 to 5.5 times as high as those of white adults in every year from 1980 through 2007, the last year for which complete data were available. About one in three of the more than 25.4 million adult drug arrestees during that period was African American.

Via Drug War Chronicle: [More...]

More than 25.4 million people have been arrested on drug charges since 1980, the analysis found. About one-third of them were black, although African-Americans make up only about 13% of the population and 13% of drug users.

"Jim Crow may be dead, but the drug war has never been color-blind," said Jamie Fellner, senior counsel with Human Rights Watch's US Program and author of the report. "Although whites and blacks use and sell drugs, the heavy hand of the law is more likely to fall on black shoulders."

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 06, 2009 (boomark / email).