COUNTY RANKED SECOND-WORST IN RACIAL BALANCE ON DRUG CRIMES

Atlantic County ranks second among the nation's nearly 200 largest
counties for its disparity in the number of blacks jailed for
drug-related crimes compared with whites, according to findings of a
study released by the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute.

The study found that 97 percent of the nation's counties with 250,000
or more people incarcerated blacks at a higher rate than whites. Kern
County, Calif., has the highest drug-admission rate with 320 per
100,000 people, while ranking fifth in the nation for the number of
blacks in the jails as opposed to whites. Atlantic County has the
second-highest drug admission rate, with 256 drug offenders admitted
per 100,000 people and 960 blacks admitted per 100,000 black
residents. Camden County ranks fifth in the nation for admission of
drug offenders and 14th for racial disparity, while Ocean County ranks
122nd for drug offender admission and 40th for disparity.

A spokeswoman for New Jersey's state judiciary department as well as
the Atlantic County executive said the study does not show the whole
picture.

Winnie Comfort, spokeswoman for New Jersey's judiciary, said that
while she is sure the researchers put a lot of work into the study,
the information is old - based on 2002 figures. Researchers from the
Justice Policy Institute said the numbers were the most up to date
they could gather from the counties analyzed.

"We did not have drug court in Atlantic and Cape May counties until
September of 2004. We talked many times about the need for drug court
to help alleviate the over-representation of minorities incarcerated,"
Comfort said. "I think it is inappropriate to call Atlantic County
among the top in the nation (for racial disparity) when only 198
counties across the country were examined and entire states were not
included in the study."

Amanda Petteruti, a researcher at the Justice Policy Institute, said
Monday that the co-authors of the year-long study purposely used the
rates of people imprisoned per 100,000 people in the county for accuracy.

While Petteruti said the focus was really on racial disparity, it also
dealt with poverty, unemployment and law enforcement.

"We could say across the board, the higher the spending on law
enforcement, the higher the prison rate," she said. "When we did the
statistical analysis, we were able to make these comparisons."

Petteruti said the study really gets to the heart of how local
officials are allocating funds in the budget for public safety. What
the institute found was counties that used more funding on law
enforcement and not as much on rehabilitation had a higher rate of
blacks locked up for drug-related crimes.

Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson said the Atlantic County
jail in Mays Landing is overcrowded.

"We better get a saner policy. Those out there who think the drug
offenders should be locked up and the key should be thrown away should
keep in mind that the county taxpayer is responsible for feeding the
inmates," Levinson said. "It could cost $70 to $90 a day to house an
inmate, and we have about 1,000 inmates."

In 2005, just a year after the drug courts began in Atlantic and Cape
May counties, the Atlantic City NAACP honored Atlantic County for its
work to reduce recidivism with rehabilitation programs, Levinson said.

Levinson also touched upon the second part of the study: economics.
"If, say, an African-American person has a court-appointed attorney
because he cannot afford his own and the other has Ed Jacobs, (a
prominent defense attorney) if I were a betting man, I would bet on Ed
Jacobs."

The study is the first to localize the racially uneven impact of drug
imprisonment at the county level, officials from the study said.

"Rather than focus law enforcement efforts on drug-involved people who
bear little threat to public safety, we should free up local resources
to fund treatment, job training, supportive housing, and other
effective public safety strategies," said Jason Ziedenberg, executive
director of the Justice Policy Institute.