NATION'S WAR ON DRUGS TARGETS BLACKS UNFAIRLY, STUDY FINDS

WASHINGTON - The Human Rights Watch report is a state-by-state
analysis of race and drugs prison admissions.

A new study by Human Rights Watch concludes that the nation's war on
drugs overwhelmingly has targeted blacks --- even though drug users
are white.

Researchers found that 62.7 percent of the drug offenders admitted to
state prisons are black and that black men are sent to state prison on
drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.

Nationwide, one in every 20 black men over the age of 18 is in prison.
The greatest racial disparities were in Illinois, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, Maine, Iowa, Mary land, Ohio, New Jersey, North Carolina
and West Virginia. Black men were sent to prison on drug charges at 27
to 57 times the rate of white men.

In Texas, researchers, determined that black men are sent to prison on
drug charges at 19 times the rate of white men. For all offenses,
black men are incarcerated at 12 times the rate of whites. One out of
14 black men in Texas is in prison, compared to one out of every 172
white men.

"Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on
Drugs" is described by officials with Human Rights Watch as
the first state-by-state analysis of the role of race and
drugs in prison admissions

"These racial disparities are a national scandal," said Ken Roth,
executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Black and white drug
offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice
system. This is not only profoundly unfair to blacks. It also corrodes
the American ideal of equal justice for all."

The report asserts that "drug control policies bear primary
responsibility for the quadrupling of the national prison population
since 1980 and a soaring incarceration rate, the highest among Western
democracies."

Jamie Fellner, associate counsel for the group and the report's
author, said prison demographics do not reflect drug usage in the
United States, where five times as many whites use drugs as blacks.

"The solution to this racial inequity is not to incarcerate more
whites, but to reduce the use of prison for low-level drug offenders
and to increase the availability of substance-abuse treatment," she
said.

The report makes several recommendations. Among them:

o A re-evaluation of strategies for fighting drugs, in particular, the
costs and benefits of relying on incarceration.

o The elimination of mandatory minimum sentencing laws based on prior
criminal record and the amount of drugs sold.

o Increased availability of alternative sanctions for nonviolent drug
offenders and increased use of special drug courts where addicted
criminal offenders can opt for supervised substance-abuse treatment
rather than prison.

o The elimination of racial profiling by police.

"The extraordinary number of nonviolent drug offenders sent to prison
bespeaks a nation determined to 'send a message' about drugs and crime
regardless of whether prison is ineffective, cruel and unduly costly
compared to other ways of responding to drugs," the report states.

"While drug abuse and drug trafficking warrant concerted national
efforts, it may be that the human, social, and economic costs of the
prison 'cure' is worse than the 'disease' itself."