Fewer Blacks, More Whites Locked Up For Drugs

According to the Sentencing Project, the number of blacks in prison for drug offenses is declining while the number of whites is increasing.

For the first time since crack cocaine sparked a war on drugs 20 years ago, the number of black Americans in state prisons for drug offenses has fallen sharply, while the number of white prisoners convicted for drug crimes has increased, according to a report released yesterday.

The D.C.-based Sentencing Project reported that the number of black inmates in state prisons for drug offenses had fallen from 145,000 in 1999 to 113,500 in 2005, a 22 percent decline. In that period, the number of white drug offenders rose steadily, from about 50,000 to more than 72,000, a 43 percent increase. The number of Latino drug offenders was virtually unchanged at about 51,000.

The findings represent a significant shift in the racial makeup of those incarcerated for drug crimes and could signal a gradual change in the demographics of the nation's prison population of 2 million, which has been disproportionately black for decades. Drug offenders make up about a quarter of the prison population.

Source - Washington Post, A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners Fewer Blacks and More Whites, Says Sentencing Project

10 Ways to Shrink Prisons

10. Don't Commit Crimes

Seems pretty obvious, but those who are locked up (and are actually guilty) didn't seem to get the memo that crime does not pay.

9. Get a Good Lawyer

Far too many people, particularly minorities, wind up in the clink because they didn't have adequate defense. The court system's public defenders are underfunded, understaffed and overburdened. Get a lawyer. He or she will might be able to get you off the hook. That's all some people need to get on the straight and narrow.

8. Support Businesses That Build Rural Economies

With much of America's farmland disappearing, rural areas are becoming desperate for places to employ their idle populations. Politicians from those areas lobby for funding to build state prisons, so that their people are employed. In many states, although inmates cannot vote, they are counted as part of the population, thereby justifying more funds for those areas. When farms, mills and plants in small rural communities subsist, there is no need to build prisons to replace them.

7. Support Drug Rehab Centers

Drug addiction is not a crime, it's an illness that is treatable, thank God. For the amount of money spent on trying, housing, feeding and providing health care for people locked up due to drugs, a small fraction of that money could be spent rehabilitating drug addicts so that they could permanently get the monkey off their backs, thereby destroying the market for dope.

6. Don't Elect "Tough on Crime" Politicians

Instead, vote for candidates who campaign on crime prevention, community counseling and youth intervention. Most important, support politicians who advocate increased funding for public education. Preventive measures can reduce both.

5. Discipline Your Kids

Child abuse is very bad. Don't hurt 'em. But applaud mothers who knock the hell out of their kid in public for smarting off at the supermarket. Courthouses have lines around the block of young people whose parents thought it was cute for them to act like little ghetto birds when they were 4. But now at age 18, when you are taking out a second mortgage on your home to pay legal bills, that cute crap doesn't work. Big secret: Judges hate cute.

4. Get Out, Stay Out

One of the main points a Pew Research Center report on this issues brings up is the number of recidivists -- or people who keep going back. They make up a large number of people who are incarcerated in this country. In fact, if it weren't for them, the 1 in 100 stat wouldn't be nearly as high.

3. Crackdown on Rogue Gun Dealers

Remember the D.C. sniper? Well, between 1997 and 2001, guns sold by the clown who supplied him were involved in 52 crimes, including homicides, kidnappings and assaults. Still open to this day, the dealer also can't account for 238 guns or say whether they were stolen, lost or sold, or if their buyers had to undergo felony background checks. These chumps keep in close contact with the supportive gun lobby to make sure gun laws remain weak.

2. Threaten Your Children

This relates to #5, and is very important. You know about the ratio of high school dropouts in jail to educated people who are not in jail. Okay, just to drive the point home, the National Educational Association says 75 percent of all people in America who are state prison inmates are high school dropouts. This means if your child quits before he or she graduates high school, there's a one-in-three chance you'll get a 3 a.m. call saying: "Mama, I'm in jail, I need you to come get me." What you do from there is up to you, but I'd leave their little butts locked up.

1. Quit Getting High

More than half of the people imprisoned in this country are doing time because of drug offenses. Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs" was moronic rhetoric at best, designed to galvanize conservative white politicians who hate black people and their religious right constituents. And I can certainly see the merits of legalization as alternative. But piggybacking off #7, the fact of the matter is dope creates an illicit economy of marketers, investors, speculators and has a very large consumer group. That consumer group drives the whole thing.

Drug use and the drug trade are the gangrene of many poor urban and rural communities. High level and repeat manufacturers, importers and distributors of crack cocaine and crystal methamphetamine should be locked up.

But putting non-violent drug offenders in prison as a first option doesn't make good sense, or good dollars and cents, in the long run and it doesn't end the problems. It only postpones them.

"I have no doubt that crystal meth explains some of the white increase, but I'm not ready to say it's the reason for all of the white increase," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which opposes stiff penalties for nonviolent drug crimes. "It's also hard to imagine that [drug courts] are not having some effect. Most drug courts are in urban areas where African Americans live."
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Drug courts offer nonviolent offenders the option of undergoing rigorous substance-abuse treatment and criminal rehabilitation or going to jail. There are more than 2,000 such courts in operation, mostly in cities with large black communities ravaged by violence associated with crack cocaine. White offenders also are increasingly winding up in drug courts for abusing meth.

Some experts on the ground aren't seeing any changes at all. Read the entire article for yourself.

What do you think?

Hat tip to Blogamiga Sylvia/M for highlighting this story on Facebook.

+ Study: More Whites, Fewer Blacks Going to State Prisons for Drugs