RACE ANALYSIS CITES DISPARITY IN SENTENCING FOR NARCOTICS

Nearly twice as many black men and women are being imprisoned for drug
offenses than are whites, even though studies show that there are five
times more white drug users than black ones, an international human
rights organization said today. The report by Human Rights Watch joins
a growing body of evidence compiled by liberal advocacy groups showing
racial disparities in the country's soaring prison population. That
population has quadrupled since 1980 and is expected to surpass two
million next year.

"These racial disparities are a national scandal," Ken Roth, executive
director of Human Rights Watch said. "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 noted that the overwhelming bulk of the increase in the
prison population could be attributed to drug offenses. The report
said 62.7 percent of drug offenders sent to prison in 1996, the last
year for which complete statistics were available, were
African-American, while 36.7 percent were white.

The Census Bureau estimates that blacks currently make up about 12.8
percent of the population and that whites, including Hispanic whites,
are about 82.3 percent.

While the Human Rights Watch underlined the racial disparities in the
criminal justice system, other experts in the field said the issue was
more complicated than racism.

Experts at the Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics, a division of
the Justice Department, say that while studies indicate there are five
times as many white users of illegal drugs as black users, drug abuse
among African-Americans tends to be more chronic and involve harder
drugs such as crack cocaine and heroin.

Indeed, studies suggest black incarceration rates are still being
fueled by the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980's, which helped
produce a cadre of chronic drug users, most of whom are above the age
of 30. Many of these abusers have either been imprisoned for long
sentences or have been in and out of a criminal justice system that
fails to provide very much in the way of drug treatment, said Gen.
Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy.

"Regardless of how severe you wish to be on punishing them you simply
have to give them a drug-free prison environment," Mr. McCaffrey said.
"And there has to be a follow-on component. That, I would allege is
the largest issue."

In today's report, Human Rights Watch based its study on prison
admissions statistics in 1996. States voluntarily provide statistics
to the Justice Department, and the study does not include figures for
the 13 states that chose not to report statistics.

In much of the country, though, the report paints a picture of stark
disparities. In Illinois and Maryland, Africans-Americans represent 90
percent of those who were incarcerated for selling or using drugs. In
five other states -- Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, South
Carolina and Virginia -- blacks make up more than 80 percent of those
imprisoned on drug offenses.

Researchers from Human Rights Watch point to a myriad of causes for
the disproportionately high number of blacks incarcerated for drugs.

They note that because so much of the drug activity in poor black
neighborhoods is conducted on the street, sellers and users are easier
to spot and arrest. In addition, they contend that law enforcement
agencies direct much of their resources to combating drug activity in
black areas, rather than in white neighborhoods where drug sales and
use tend to occur behind closed doors.

Also low-income African-Americans often cannot afford lawyers to win
them more lenient sentences.

Whatever the reason, Human Rights officials say, the numbers of
African-Americans being sent to prison far out of line with the
proportion of blacks and whites shown in studies to use and sell drugs.

And they say that the disparities need to be addressed by politicians,
including the two presidential contenders.

"I think racial disparities in the criminal justice system is like the
elephant in the room that no one is talking about," said Jamie
Fellner, associate counsel of Human Rights Watch and the report's
author. "I find it incomprehensible that neither of the Presidential
candidates is talking about this. There still is a timidity to say
anything that would lend them being accused of being soft on crime.
Nobody is willing to say enough is enough."