DRUG CRIME - MINORITY ARRESTS TELL ANOTHER STORY

New figures showing that minorities are arrested and imprisoned more
often than white drug criminals quantify what had already been
observed unscientifically.

But Human Rights Watch's finding that African Americans are targeted
by the "drug war" totally out of proportion to U.S. society shows a
worse trend: the sin of sloth.

Law enforcement agencies may not want to hear it, but there is a
serious indictment in the fact that African Americans make up only 12
percent of the population but account for 62 percent of drug offenders
sent to state prisons nationwide.

The facts are that far more white Americans commit drug crimes than
African Americans. The distinguishing characteristic, the advocacy
group notes, is that drug transactions among minorities more often
occur in public, making them easier to spot, record and arrest.

The result is higher numbers of black Americans imprisoned and greater
cost to the American public. Why? Because drug sales on the streets,
though more obvious and obnoxious, are not the "big" deals that flood
this nation with illegal drugs or orchestrate the drug trade.

Arrests are easier, but those arrested are, relatively speaking, small
fry. They clog the judicial system and end up filling the prisons,
when most are dealing only to feed their own drug habit and who are
supplied by those who go scot-free.

This is not to say that police agencies should turn away from street
dealers. They broaden the drug trade, luring young people into the
trap of addiction. All drug offenders of any degree should be arrested.

But greater use of drug courts, flexible sentencing options and
treatment not only would do a better job of deterring street-level
drug sales but also would reduce addiction and save taxpayers' money
both in the social costs of drug crime and in building prisons.

"Racism" may be an easier term to throw around, but the disparity is,
in fact, a barometer of how well, or poorly, police are confronting
the real sources of drug crime.

The figures should be used as an incentive to get at the major
dealers, the suppliers, the money men and the international cartels
that are the true enemy in the "drug war."