REPORT: MORE WHITES USE DRUGS, MORE BLACKS IMPRISONED

The nation's war on drugs unfairly targets African Americans, who are far
more likely to be imprisoned for drug offenses than whites even though far
more whites use illegal drugs than blacks, according to a new report by the
advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

The report, to be released today, said that African Americans accounted for
62 percent of the drug offenders sent to state prisons nationwide in 1996,
the most recent year for which statistics are available, although they
represent just 12 percent of the U.S. population. Overall, black men are
sent to state prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men,
according to the study, which analyzes a wide range of Justice Department
information for 37 states to come up with its findings.

These disparities exist even though data gathered by the Department of
Health and Human Services show that in 1991, 1992 and 1993, about five
times as many whites had used cocaine than blacks, the report said. The
report added that drug transactions among blacks often are easier for
police to target because they more often occur in public than do drug
transactions among whites.

"These racial disparities are a national scandal," said Ken Roth, executive
director of Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organization.
"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 disparities are particularly striking in individual states, where black
men are sent to prison on drug charges at rates as much as 57 times greater
than that of white men. In Maryland, for example, blacks make up 27 percent
of the population and 90 percent of those sent to prison on drug charges
– for a rate that is 28 times greater than whites.

In Virginia, meanwhile, blacks are 82 percent of those sent to prison on
drug charges and just 20 percent of the population. Overall, they are sent
to prison on drug charges at a rate 21 times greater than whites.

"More blacks were sent to state prison nationwide on drug charges than for
crimes of violence," Jamie Fellner, associate counsel for Human Rights
Watch, wrote in the report. "Only 27 percent of black admissions to prison
were for crimes of violence – compared to 38 percent for drug offenses."

The Human Rights Watch report adds to a growing array of studies
documenting racial disparities in the nation's criminal justice system. A
report last month by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights found that
African Americans and Hispanics are treated more harshly than similarly
situated whites at every level of the criminal justice system. And that
report came on the heels of a study by the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency showing that black and Hispanic youth are more likely than
whites to be arrested, prosecuted, held in jail without bail and sentenced
to long prison terms.

Remedies suggested in the Human Rights Watch report include the repeal of
mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenders, increasing drug treatment and
eliminating racial profiling as a police tactic.

Largely because of the huge disparity in imprisonment for drug offenses,
blacks are sent to prison at 8.2 times the rate of whites. Overall, one in
20 black men over the age of 18 is in a state or federal prison, compared
to one in 180 white men.

"Prison is a legitimate criminal sanction," the report said. "But it should
be used sensibly, justly, parsimoniously, and with due consideration . . .
and respect for human dignity required by international human rights law.
The incarceration of hundreds of thousands of low-level, non-violent drug
offenders betrays indifference to such considerations."