RIGHTS GROUP DOCUMENTS WHAT BLACKS ALWAYS KNEW

A recent report by Human Rights Watch has documented something African
Americans have known for years: The U.S. war on illegal drugs has been
waged unfairly against blacks.

The findings in "Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the
War on Drugs" are based on U.S. government statistics. Among other
proposals, HRW calls for the repeal of mandatory sentencing laws for
drug offenders, improvement in drug-abuse treatment, alternative
sanctions and an end to racial profiling.

The popular perception is that African Americans are America's
greatest drug offenders. But whites use illegal narcotics at a rate
five times that among African Americans. Yet blacks are far more often
arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses. In the 10 states with the
largest disparities (including New Jersey), blacks are jailed for
illegal drug offenses up to 57 times more often than whites. Their
numbers have swollen America's penal institutions at an alarming rate.

According to HRW executive director Ken Roth, black and white drug
offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice
system. Such differences, he said, are "not only profoundly unfair to
blacks, they also corrode the American ideal of equal justice for all."

In 1996, the most recent year for which complete statistics were
available, blacks constituted 62.6 percent of all drug offenders
admitted to state prisons. Whites represented 36.7 percent, according
to HRW, which analyzed prison admissions in 37 states based on data
gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of
Justice.

Blacks have long been aware of their unfair treatment by local police
and other law enforcement agencies that send them to jail in numbers
far greater than others who violate U.S. drug laws.

Jimmy Johnston, a former drug user who was born in Trenton 29 years
ago, put it this way: "Look, I was out in the streets of Trenton,
Newark and New York City for 11 years. I know what went on. Nobody can
tell me that it's mainly blacks involved in drugs. Whites are even
more involved. They use and handle far more narcotics than we ever
thought of using.

"But they don't get busted in the same way African Americans do. The
cops stayed on us. They watched every move. But with whites, the whole
attitude is different. They move a lot of stuff, and a lot of times
the cops either look the other way or concentrate on us so much that
the white guys who commit the same offenses are sometimes ignored."

Johnson is well aware that blacks are often sent to jail while whites
who commit the same offenses stay home. "I don't have to read a
report," he insisted in a telephone interview yesterday. "I was on the
scene and I know what goes down."

Johnson's views jibe with the HRW report that said, "In poor black
neighborhoods, drug transactions are more likely to be conducted on
the streets, in public and between strangers." By contrast, in white
neighborhoods - working-class through upper-class - drugs are more
likely to be sold indoors, in bars, clubs and private homes. It's
easier and costs less for police to target minority neighborhoods
because drug transactions are generally more visible.

The result: Prisons throughout the United States are overcrowded with
African American inmates. The implications are far more ominous than
unfair treatment of black drug offenders alone.

Jimmy Johnson was right when he pointed out that it is "not logical
that the only abuse of blacks by the U.S. Justice Department involves
drug arrests. They use racial profiling to lock up African Americans
for all sorts of criminal activities. We're supposed to be treated
just like others under the law. But we're not."

HRW used the government's own data to issue a report that largely
substantiates what African Americans have experienced for generations.
It amounts to a denial of equal protection under the law as provided
by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The question that's
left is whether the government will do anything about such blatant
abuses or simply allow them to continue.