Life Free at Last?
posted by January 15 at 12:15 PM
onAccording to the federal Household Survey, “most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998.” And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%.
But the enforcement disparity in Seattle couldn’t be as bad, right?
African-Americans constitute about 8 percent of Seattle’s population yet 57 percent of adult drug arrests in 1999 were African-American.
Oh…
Comments
I'd be interested to see the black / white breakout on who is doing the dealing, and who is involved in violent drug crimes (vs. using their shit quietly). It might illuminate the numbers.
Here's more info and numbers, You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me: http://www.defender.org/defensenewsarchive/racial-disparity.html
In addition to the news articles linked from the page, you can also read the full report "RACE AND DRUG LAW ENFORCEMENT IN SEATTLE" by Katherine Beckett.
Katherine Beckett, University of Washington: "Race and Drug Law Enforcement in Seattle" (PDF)
quoting the report's introduction:
Also possible contribution to the disparity: black people tend to live in urban areas where there is a higher concentration of cops (ie, higher chance of getting busted) versus whites who live in the 'burbs and rural areas where cops are fewer and further between. Precinct by precinct stats would be interesting. I'm not saying that explains the disparity (racial bias does, imo), but it could skew the results.
the ethnographic comparison article pretty much does away with that argument.
I'm curious how they get the racial statistics on drug use. Just by asking people in different groups? I'm also surprised Asians weren't included in this survey.
The previous question about dealing is relevent. I know that the people who have offered to sell me drugs on Broadway/Belltown/Pioneer Square is not anywhere near what the racial makeup of the city or neighborhood is. To put it less diplomatically, most of the time I've been offered drugs it's been by a person of color. Sorry if that's taboo to say. Especially if you don't see the dealer as the victim. On a similarly taboo note, a disproporiate amount of time I see someone threaten someone or violence happening it involves people of color, even in neighborhoods that are 95% white.
Where are you from, him? That may be the case in some cities, but it's not the case here. In Seattle, the most densely-populated areas -- those at the core of the "inner city" -- are mostly comprised of white people (around 85%) while the city's population as a whole is only about 70% white. Most black people in Seattle -- a little under 10% of the population -- tend to live outside the city's urban areas.
I wonder if that figure is taking into account multiple arrests of the same person.
I was on jury duty last spring. The defendent was this black guy who I suspect was mentally ill. He'd been arrested for possession several times before, but - as I understand it - it was always a small amount of drugs so that it wasn't a felony (although I could have that wrong)
Anyway, they ended up making a deal, and we didn't have to reach a verdict which was a relief; While technically, he was guilty, jail clearly wasn't helping either him or society.
The King County Bar Association site Dominic quoted cites a 2001 paper from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. I just read that paper, and while it probably does take into account multiple arrests of the same person, it does not treat any such arrests differently than those for multiple people, as the unit of measurement is the arrest, not the arrestee. I assume you intended to ask about the latter.
The Kennedy School paper is an easy read. I encourage anyone who's remotely interested to read at least the summary. What is clear from the paper is that aside from the relatively small number of officers involved with investigating higher-level parts of drug distribution networks, the focus of Seattle police with regards to illicit drugs was on street sales (which are mostly of cocaine, and most of that crack cocaine) in the West Precinct (downtown, Pioneer Square, Belltown), and on the sellers more than buyers (while acknowledging that at lower levels, someone who is a seller one day is often a buyer another day). It suggests that this is a result of police picking the low-hanging fruit in places where they say they believe that the public is especially bothered by that fruit and by the societal belief that sellers are more deserving of blame than buyers are.
As for the guy that you saw while on jury duty, Catalina: What do we do about people like that? He's going to repeatedly break the law, but it's not like he's stealing or cheating or hurting other people (not in this case, anyway, and if he's doing those other things then he should be arrested for them not for drug possession). The law he's breaking says, "You may not ingest or even be in possession of this substance," and the combination of his life situation and his perceived benefit from the substance are such that he's willing to face arrest and prosecution in order to have the substance. We've tried jailing people for problematic drug use, but it's clearly not working out very well for us.
We really have a crisis on our hands, and drugs are no more the root cause than are desperation, bad luck, lack of self control, or the increasing gap between the rich and poor. The real problem, I think, is the prohibition.
Drug prohibition pushes drug sales into a black market over which we have little or no control.
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