FIX RACIAL INJUSTICE ON DRUG CRIMES

Black defendants in Michigan are far more likely to be locked up for
drug offenses than white ones, underscoring the need for new policing
practices and better access to urban drug treatment programs that can
serve as alternatives to incarceration. Unfortunately, the disparities
in how drug policies affect whites and people of color in Michigan
aren't unusual.

A new report by a nonprofit, Washington-based policy institute,
examining nearly 200 of the nation's largest counties, found that 97%
of them had racial disparities in drug incarceration rates. Overall,
African Americans were 10 times more likely than whites to be
imprisoned for drug offenses, even though whites and blacks sell and
use illegal drugs at similar rates.

But large Michigan counties did worse, the Justice Policy Institute
found, with Wayne County imprisoning African Americans for drug
offense at 12 times the rate of whites.

Outside Detroit, the picture was even grimmer, with ratios of 30-1 in
Kent County, 42-1 in Washtenaw County, 23-1 in Macomb County, and 20-1
in Oakland County.

"It's one those dirty little secrets," said East Lansing Attorney F.
Martin Tieber, past president of the Criminal Defense Attorneys of
Michigan. "Those communities put police in low-income neighborhoods
where overall crime tends to be higher. There, any illegal drug
activity is more out in the open and visible to police than it is in
higher-priced residential or gated-communities."

Nationwide, the report, entitled "The Vortex," found that blacks,
while 13% of the population, made up more than half of sentenced drug
offenders in state prisons. Drug offenses have contributed to huge
increases in incarceration over the last 35 years, especially among
African Americans. They make up about half of the 2 million people in
the nation's prisons and jails, as well as about half of Michigan's
50,000 state prisoners. Last year, drug offenses made up nearly 16% of
Michigan's more than 11,000 new prison commitments.

The Justice Policy Institute study did not report prior records, which
could help explain some of the disparities. Even so, the gaps are so
striking that they raise serious questions about the availability of
treatment and diversion programs for people of color, the impact of
drug laws and mandatory minimum sentences on low-income and urban
communities, and the use of police resources to enforce drug laws
instead of focusing on violent crime.

As a start, Michigan needs to target more community corrections
dollars to urban drug treatment programs that can keep people out of
jail. The American ideal of equality under the law rings hollow as
long as drug laws continue to have such an unequal impact.