U.S. 'DRUG WAR' UNJUST TO AFRICAN AMERICANS, TWO STUDIES FIND

Ostensibly color-blind, the U.S. "war on drugs" disproportionately
targets urban minority neighborhoods, Human Rights Watch and The
Sentencing Project said in two reports released May 5. Although
whites commit more drug offenses, African Americans are arrested and
imprisoned on drug charges at much higher rates, the reports find.

In the 67-page report, "Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and
Race in the United States" (hrw.org/reports/2008/us0508/), Watch
documents with detailed new statistics persistent racial disparities
among drug offenders sent to prison in 34 states. All of these states
send Black drug offenders to prison at much higher rates than whites.

"Most drug offenders are white, but most of the drug offenders sent
to prison are Black," said Jamie Fellner, senior counsel in the U.S.
program at Human Rights Watch and author of "Targeting Blacks." "The
solution is not to imprison more whites but to radically rethink how
to deal with drug abuse and low-level drug offenders."

Key findings in the Human Rights Watch report include:

* Across the 34 states, a Black man is 11.8 times more likely than a
white man to be sent to prison on drug charges, and a Black woman is
4.8 times more likely than a white woman.

* In 16 states, African Americans are sent to prison for drug
offenses at rates between 10 and 42 times greater than the rate for
whites. The 10 states with the greatest racial disparities in prison
admissions for drug offenders are: Wisconsin, Illinois, New Jersey,
Maryland, West Virginia, Colorado, New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania,
and Michigan.

The Sentencing Project's 45-page study, "Disparity by Geography: The
War on Drugs in America's Cities"
(http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_drugarrestreport.pdf),
is the first city-level analysis of drug arrests, examining data from
43 of the nation's largest cities between 1980 and 2003. The study
found that, since 1980, the rate of drug arrests in American cities
for African Americans increased by 225 percent, compared to 70
percent among whites. Black arrest rates grew by more than 500
percent in 11 cities during this period; and, in nearly half of the
cities, the odds of arrest for a drug offense among African Americans
relative to whites more than doubled.

"The alarming increase in drug arrests since 1980, concentrated among
African Americans, raises fundamental questions about fairness and
justice," said Ryan S. King, policy analyst for The Sentencing
Project and author of Disparity by Geography. "But even more
troubling is the fact that these trends come not as the result of
higher rates of drug use among African Americans, but, instead, the
decisions by local officials about where to pursue drug enforcement."

Among The Sentencing Project report's key findings:

* African-American drug arrests increased at 3.4 times the rate of
whites despite similar rates of drug use.

* Extreme city variations in drug arrests point to local enforcement
decisions as a prime contributor to racial disparity.

* Six cities experienced more than a 500-percent rise in overall drug
arrests between 1980 and 2003: Tucson (887 percent), Buffalo (809
percent), Kansas City (736 percent), Toledo (701 percent), Newark
(663 percent), and Sacramento (597 percent).

The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch urge public officials
to restore fairness, racial justice, and credibility to drug-control
efforts. They recommend public officials take a number of concrete
steps, including:

* Eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and restoring judicial
discretion to sentencing of drug offenders;

* Increasing public funding of substance abuse treatment and
prevention outreach to make these readily available in communities of
color in particular;

* Enhancing public health-based strategies to reduce harms associated
with drug abuse and reallocating public resources accordingly.

Last week's reports come on the heels of the March 2008
recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination. The committee urged that U.S. criminal justice
policies and practices address the unwarranted racial disparities
that have been documented at all levels of the system.