CHIPPING AWAY AT NUMBER OF IMPRISONED BLACK MALES

As a longtime crack addict from Lexington, Ky., George Moorman was
one more black male being churned through America's criminal justice
system until one day in 1997, when he came before a drug court judge
for stealing a camcorder.

"He decided to put me in the drug court program - he told me I was
too intelligent to go to the penitentiary," recalls Moorman, who, at
54, just earned a doctorate in educational psychology from the
University of Kentucky. "I'd already made the decision to change. But
saying you're going to make a change doesn't mean you're going to do
it. You have to have the support."

Finding that support is difficult under the mass of statistics that
have piled up in the 26 years since America declared a war on drugs.
Increasingly harsher sentencing mandates have stacked the numbers
against African American men, resulting in prisons becoming the
largest treatment centers in the country.

Today, African Americans comprise 62 percent of imprisoned drug
offenders, though they are only 13 percent of the national
population. One out of every 115 black males enters prison each year
on a felony drug crime, compared with one of every 1,150 white men,
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And black youths are
admitted to state correction facilities for drug offenses at 48 times
the rate of white youths, according to a report by the Building
Blocks for Youth Initiative.

"There's an attitude of hopelessness and despair that many blacks
have as a result of unemployment," says Arthur L. Burnett Sr.,
executive director of the National African American Drug Policy
Coalition. "The only way we can cope with it is by starting with
youngsters in the third grade, and that's what we're doing."

The NAADPC, an umbrella group of 23 professional organizations, is
spearheading an educational response with a 10-year goal to reduce
the number of black inmates and double the number of black
professionals. Among its key plans: an internship program to identify
gifted eighth-graders in specific subject areas and pair them with
black mentors in law, medicine, engineering and other fields.

"We're saying, let's go back to the ideas of Booker T. Washington,"
says Burnett, the first African American magistrate, now retired,
from the U.S. Magistrate in Washington, D.C. "Don't let's wait for
government handouts. Let the black community come together in a
spirit of self-reliance."

Other groups are looking and listening more closely to create or fix
programs to chip away at the numbers.

In Santa Cruz, Calif., a review of court records showed that minority
juveniles were significantly more likely than white offenders to miss
their early morning court hearings. Interviewers found most of the
black and Hispanic youths were traveling to the courthouse from
Watsonville, a 45-minute drive from the south. In response, a new
courtroom was opened there and the failure-to-show rate dropped.

In northeast Philadelphia, The Bridge, a residential treatment and
continuing care program, embraces the participation of families,
churches and schools to "resocialize" African-American teenagers
who've been thrown out of other juvenile justice programs.

"One of the biggest things we look for is trauma," explains director
Angelo Adson, adding that 80 percent of the youths have experienced
some significant form of it.

"As a result, most of them have some kind of post traumatic stress
disorder," he says. "Yet the majority are diagnosed with conduct
disorder - and it's exacerbated when they go into a juvenile justice
facility," where they typically spend 200 or more days before being
referred for treatment. For their white peers, referral comes in a
mere 40 days.

Says Adson, "That disparity speaks volumes about how kids are evaluated."

Hundreds of studies have seized on explanations for the disparity in
treatment. But most start in the courtroom, with the simple judicial
distinction between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. The two drugs
contain the same active ingredient; the only chemical difference is
that crack is mixed with baking soda and then heated. It is sold in
smaller, cheaper quantities and widely regarded as a "black" drug.

The biggest difference is what happens when dealers come before a
judge. A five-gram sale of crack automatically means a minimum
five-year sentence, but a dealer in powder cocaine has to sell 100
times that amount - or 500 grams - to get the same sentence.

The results? In 1986, before the enactment of federal mandatory
minimum sentencing for crack cocaine offenses, the average federal
drug sentence for African Americans was 11 percent higher than that
of whites. Just four years later, that number was 49 percent higher.

"It's so much easier to arrest a crack dealer on the street rather
than someone in a business suit who's selling pot and cocaine," says
Kurt Schmoke, former Baltimore mayor and current dean of Howard
University's Law School, who is leading a legislative effort to untie
judges' hands and allow them to sentence drug offenders on a case-by-case basis

Widening the gap is the creation of drug-free zones - typically
1,000-foot perimeters around schools, public housing complexes, parks
and playgrounds, in which the penalties for drug offenses are
significantly harsher. Whole inner-city neighborhoods may qualify as
drug-free zones. In Newark, N.J., for example, drug-free zone laws
cover three-quarters of the city and require judges to lay down
mandatory minimum sentencing terms.

The ramifications reach far beyond prison. A federal drug conviction
prevents an offender from obtaining future education loans and
work-study grants, and bans parents from receiving food stamps and
welfare benefits. It has disenfranchised 1.4 million African-American
men from permanently voting - a rate seven times the national average.

"It has so many debilitating consequences that it is
counterproductive to the goal of trying to rid us of a drug problem,"
Schmoke says. "Rather than being punished for that one act, it's an
ongoing handicap that prevents you from being rehabilitated. And it's
driven mostly by politics rather than science."

Recent research suggests that uneven incarceration rates may even
help explain disproportionately high rates of AIDS in the black
community. According to the latest statistics from 2004, black men
and women accounted for 20,965 AIDS cases, compared with 12,013 for
whites and 8,672 for Hispanics.

"We're looking at a three-headed monster: addiction, AIDS and crime,"
Schmoke says. "You have to have a good public health policy to go
after AIDS and addiction. Otherwise, you're just churning the same
people out over and over again."

With the foresight of one judge and the support of a strong drug
court program, the cycle has stopped for George Moorman, who vowed
that he would redress every arrest and negative mark on his record
with something positive.

"When I came to drug court, they were so strict, they gave me so much
to do, that I couldn't think of doing anything else. I decided to
trust them with my life, basically. They said, 'Go to a meeting.' I
went to a meeting. They said, 'Call in every day, three days a week.'
I called."

Something clicked. " I realized I was 44 years old, short, black and
handsome - and I hadn't done anything that mattered to me, my family,
or society. ... And right now I am in my house looking at my walls
and they're filled with certificates, outstanding achievement awards,
dean's awards, degrees and awards for community service.

"It's like some unfinished business," he says. "You have to clean up
before you can move forward. I brought drugs into my community. By me
using drugs I caused someone else to use drugs. I gloried in it. I
sanctioned it. I had to go back and clean up what I'd messed up."

(Sara Solovitch is a freelancer writer and former Knight Ridder reporter.)