UNITED STATES:

STARK RACE DISPARITIES IN DRUG INCARCERATION

The U.S. war on drugs has been waged overwhelmingly against black Americans, Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged in a new report released on 8 June. The report "Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs" includes the first state-by-state analysis of the role of race and drugs in prison admissions. All of the 37 states HRW studied send black drug offenders to prison at far higher rates than whites.

According to HRW, the racial disparities are a national scandal: Black and white drug offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice system. The ten states with the greatest racial disparities are: Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine, Iowa, Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey, North Carolina, and West Virginia. In these states, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 27 to 57 times the rate of white men.

Most U.S. drug offenders are white. Moreover, five times as many whites use drugs as blacks. But blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison. According to HRW, the solution to this racial inequity is not to incarcerate more whites, but to reduce the use of prison for low-level drug offenders and to increase the availability of substance abuse treatment."

According to the HRW report, nationwide, blacks comprise 62 percent of drug offenders admitted to state prisons. In seven states, blacks constitute between 80 and 90 percent of all people sent to prison on drug charges. Black men are sent to state prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men. Two out of five blacks sent to prison are convicted of drug offenses, compared to one in four whites. Black men are incarcerated at 9.6 times the rate of white men. In eleven states, they are incarcerated at rates that are 12 to 26 times greater than that of white men. Nationwide, one in every 20 black men over the age of 18 is in prison. In five states, between one in 13 and one in 14 black men are in prison.

"Punishment and Prejudice" also documents how drug law enforcement has fueled the exploding U.S. prison population. During the 1990s, more than 100,000 people were admitted to prison on drug charges every year. Over 1.5 million prison admissions on drug charges have occurred since 1980. The incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders has propelled the nation's soaring incarceration rate, the highest in the western world. HRW called for changes in drug control strategies to minimize their racially disproportionate impact and to reduce the overincarceration of nonviolent offenders.

Among its recommendations, HRW urges states to repeal mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenders; increase the availability of alternative sanctions; increase the use of drug courts; increase the availability of substance abuse treatment; and eliminate racial profiling.

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Source: Human Rights Watch/Americas Division, 8 June 2000.

For more information please contact Human Rights Watch, tel. +1-202-612-4321, E-mail hrwdc@hrw.org