BLACKS IMPRISONED AT RATE OUT OF PROPORTION TO DRUG USE

The chances of being swept up by the war on drugs, the principal factor
behind Virginia's prison boom, have a lot to do with skin color.

It is a national phenomenon for which there is no universally accepted
explanation. Theories range from the relative ease of apprehension to
outright racism.

But the statistics are undeniable: African-Americans are arrested,
prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned on drug charges in numbers vastly out
of proportion to their use of illegal drugs.

Reaction to the numbers tends to run along racial lines. Several Hampton
Roads law enforcers and lawmakers expressed surprise or dismay over the
huge racial disparity in drug-law enforcement. But black area officials
said the pattern is common knowledge in the black community.

``That's one of the glaring inconsistencies in the war on drugs,'' said
Del. Jerrauld C. Jones, D-Norfolk. ``It's only fought on one front, and
that front happens most often to be the African-American community.''

Terming the phenomenon a ``national crisis,'' Jones said: ``We must
recognize it, we must identify it. We must not be afraid to talk about it.''

Although Virginia's population is three-quarters white, its prison
population is two-thirds black. Black Virginians are seven times more
likely to be locked up than whites, according to U.S. Justice Department data.

The disparity is particularly noticeable when it comes to drugs.

Drug offenses, especially those involving cocaine, have accounted for far
and away the fastest-growing share of prison admissions in recent decades.

National drug use surveys show that far more whites than blacks use illicit
drugs.

Six times as many whites as blacks, for instance, reported using cocaine
during the past year in the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse
conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

State-by-state estimates produced by HHS indicate that drug use in Virginia
mirrors the national pattern. Yet, 60 to 65 percent of cocaine felons in
Virginia prisons are black.

A Virginian-Pilot analysis of court records in South Hampton Roads over an
18-month period, from July 1, 1997, to Dec. 31, 1998, found that 71 percent
of drug cases were brought against black defendants. The region's
population is 30 percent black.

Drug use, imprisonment rates inconsistent Contrary to the popular notion of
a crack cocaine ``epidemic'' among blacks, crack use has remained well
below 1 percent of the U.S. population since the phenomenon was first
measured in 1988 -- and the majority of crack users are white, according to
the drug use surveys. Virginia is one of seven states where, because of
felony disenfranchisement laws, one in four black men is permanently
ineligible to vote.

``Urban black Americans have borne the brunt of the war on drugs,'' wrote
Michael Tonry, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, in his 1995
book ``Malign Neglect -- Race, Crime and Punishment in America.''

``They have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned at
increasing rates since the early 1980s, and grossly out of proportion to
their numbers in the general population or among drug users.''

Tonry hypothesizes that drug activity tends to result in arrests more often
in black neighborhoods than white neighborhoods because it is more visible
and therefore easier for police to detect. ``More of the routine activities
of life, including retail drug dealing, occurs on the streets and alleys in
poor neighborhoods,'' he wrote.

Jones agrees with that explanation.

``Where does the enforcement happen?'' he said. ``It happens in the central
cities, in the public housing projects, in the ghettos, in the low-income
areas where the police have an easy time to enforce it. It's easier to
enforce it in the public housing project than it is to enforce it in Lago
Mar.''

It's like ``shooting fish in a barrel,'' Jones said.

And the disparity is multiplied at the trial stage, where black defendants
are more likely to be represented by overworked, underpaid, court-appointed
attorneys, said Del. Lionell Spruill Sr., D-Chesapeake.

``The playing ground is not level for the `have-nots,' '' Spruill said.. It
was not always this way.

In 1960, two-thirds of those admitted to federal and state prisons were
white, according to data Tonry collected for his book. But the white/black
ratio steadily narrowed over the next three decades until, in the late
'80s, blacks moved into the majority.

As late as 1983, 62 percent of drug offenders admitted to Virginia prisons
were white. By 1989, the ratio had more than reversed: 65 percent were black.

The statistics came as a surprise to many public officials contacted for
this report.

``I was unaware of that,'' said Sen. Richard J. Holland, D-Isle of Wight.
``. . . I'm surprised at those statistics.''

``It's disturbing,'' said Chesapeake Commonwealth's Attorney Randall D.
Smith. ``It should be looked at to see why, because it shouldn't be
happening.''

``I'm unaware of any deviation based on race,'' said Sen. Kenneth W.
Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, chairman of the Virginia State Crime Commission.
``If that's the case, then the people who are being punished are being
punished because of behavior, not because of race.''

Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney Chuck Griffith said race plays no role in
his office's approach to drug prosecutions. ``My staff doesn't look to see
whether somebody's black or white when we take their case to court,'' he
said. ``What we look at is whether there's any evidence that they have
committed a crime.''

Black politicians and academics expressed less surprise.

``A policy decision has been made by someone that this is the way the law
enforcement community will expend its resources and its manpower,'' said
Del. William P. Robinson Jr., D-Norfolk. ``It's part and parcel of the
racial profiling issue.''

``It's a serious concern to some of us,'' said Sen. Yvonne B. Miller,
D-Norfolk. ``I think there's still a vestige of feeling that we have
disposable people in Virginia, and unfortunately they tend to be
African-Americans. I think you can trace it all the way back to 1619.''

That was the year the first black slaves were brought to Virginia.

Manning Marable, a professor of history and political science and director
of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia
University, addressed the topic in his column ``Along the Color Line'' last
fall.

``For two centuries, the black community was confronted with the
totalitarianism of slavery,'' he wrote. ``. . . Today, the new totalitarian
mode of racial domination has become the prison-industrial complex, an
ever-expanding archipelago of prisons across the American countryside.''

Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the nation's drug czar, told a Hampton
Roads audience last month that most Americans' perceptions of drug abusers
are far removed from reality.

``The lowest rate of drug use in American society are African Americans,
who use less alcohol, cigarettes, heroin, crack cocaine, et cetera than
other racial groups,'' McCaffrey told the World Affairs Council of Greater
Hampton Roads.

``I mention that to you because all of us are dealing in our minds with
denial,'' he said.

Drug war may have hurt more than helped Some critics have raised the
alarming prospect that the war on drugs has had the perverse effect of
worsening, not alleviating, crime in the minority community. ``There is
growing evidence that the massive increases in incarceration, particularly
for drug and other nonviolent crimes, have led to a misallocation of scarce
prison resources and may be undermining families and communities, thereby
contributing to crime problems,'' William J. Sabol and James P. Lynch wrote
in a 1997 Urban Institute report. ``This is especially true in black,
inner-city communities.''

The National Criminal Justice Commission, a group that advocates
alternatives to incarceration, warned in 1996: ``In some urban areas, so
many young men are removed by the criminal justice system that it is
increasingly difficult to maintain the two-parent family as a bulwark
against crime.''