Some real effects of the US approach to crime - Part 2

Well, true, but the other difference is that while I spent the time in an alcoholic stupor, Bill and Dubya experimented with illegal drugs. Bill with marijuana he didn’t inhale and Dubya with cocaine which, I assume, he did. Personally, I think it’s no big deal, the New Haven winter drives you to extremes. But the other thing I don’t share with my fellow Yalies is support for mandatory minimum sentences for drug users. For these guys, drugs at Yale was a youthful indiscretion on the way to bigger and brighter things. For other Americans, especially the black ones, a little experimentation with mind-altering substances can mean a life sentence, literally.

If you had to pick one reason for the dramatic increase in the US prison population, drug laws would be the culprit. In fact, the US imprisons more people for non-violent drug offenses than Europe imprisons for every offense put together. The tension about drugs in the US is understandable given the terrible effects they have wreaked on the country, especially in the inner cities. But the country of extremes may have gone a tad overboard. In 1996 police arrested more than 540,000 people for possession of marijuana. In the year 2000 someone is arrested for a drug violation every twenty seconds. Possession of 5gm of cocaine or marijuana, the amount Bill or George would have had, can expose you to sentences ranging from six months jail to a lifetime in prison.

There are many problems with this ‘war on drugs’ approach. The US HIV rates climbs vastly higher than in Australia because of its intolerance towards needle exchange programs. Drug users get sent to expensive jails when many people have pointed out that treatment for addiction would be more humane, and much much cheaper. There is no shortage of drugs in prison, nor is there a shortage of violence and brutality, People tend to come out of prisons much worse than when they went in. Many would prefer we skipped sending drug offenders to the "university of crime" and tried to send them to actual university, or at least back to school.

The thing that bugs me, apologies if I am getting repetitive here, is that drug laws are used as a mechanism of oppression against the black population. But don’t believe me, look at the stats.

In 1997 a study found that African Americans represented 14 per cent of all drug users but account for 58 per cent of those convicted on drug charges. By 2000 the figure had increased to 74 per cent of those imprisoned on drug charges. Since most studies show that drug users buy drugs within their own racial groups this statistic doesn’t make a lot of sense. Where are all the white drug users and sellers? One African-American Prosecutor has stated "white folks have the sense to do drugs in the privacy of their own home…" Leaving aside the legitimacy of this kind of prosecution strategy, you have to wonder – is this all there is to it?

In the 1990s Georgia, a state in the Southern "prison belt" of the US, introduced a "two strikes and you’re out" law. When a defendant receives their 2nd felony drug conviction the prosecution has a discretion to seek a life sentence (and life usually means LIFE, not 20 years).

Who are the ones serving the life sentences? 98.4 per cent of them are black.

While the black offenders spend the rest of their life in jail, some of the white offenders get off scot-free. In Georgia whites are 30-60 per cent more likely than blacks to get probation instead of prison time

The sentencing ratio of crack cocaine to powder cocaine, despite them being the same chemical substance, is 100:1. What this means is that someone busted with powder cocaine needs to possess 100 times the amount of cocaine to get the same sentence as someone with crack. This guideline is regarded as overt racial discrimination - cocaine is seen as the drug of the white and wealthy (and potentially presidential), crack is the "black drug". In fact the US sentencing commission found that a majority of crack users are white. But the perception of crack users as black contributed to a Congress campaign to keep the unbalanced ratio.