TOUGH CRACK LAWS JAILING MANY BLACKS

Census 2000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - When an epidemic of crack and gang violence erupted in
cities like New Haven in the 1990s, police and lawmakers struck back hard.

The war on drugs yielded dozens of new laws, including mandatory sentences
for drug dealers and heavier penalties for dealing crack than for powdered
cocaine.

But those laws also had unintended consequences in minority communities.

Black men make up less than 3 percent of Connecticut's population but
account for 47 percent of inmates in prisons, jails and halfway houses,
2000 census figures show.

Overall in Connecticut, one in 11 black men between ages 18 and 64 is
behind bars, the census found. In 1990, that figure was about one in 25.

This year, the Legislature voted to give judges more leeway in sentencing
drug dealers who operate near schools, day care centers and public housing
projects.

The old law set a three-year mandatory minimum sentence for dealing within
1,500 feet of those places. In densely populated New Haven, that meant
virtually everywhere except the Yale University golf course and the
Tweed-New Haven airport runway.

The applicable census data are not yet available for Texas.

Figures released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, however, show
that Anglos make up about 32 percent of the prison population but about 52
percent of the state's 20.9 million residents.

Blacks make up 42 percent of the prison population and 11 percent of the
state's population. Hispanics account for 25 percent of the prison
population and 32 percent of the state's population.

Similar disparities can be seen across the country.

Nationwide, the Justice Department reported that 12 percent of all black
men between ages 20 and 34 were locked up last year.

Staff writer Dianna Hunt contributed to this report.