The Impact Of The War On Drugs On African Americans

African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison for drug possession. Studies have shown that minorities are subject to disparate treatment at arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the entire nation. (Justice, 2004)

The United States incarcerates more people, per capita, than any other nation in the entire world. State and local prisons and jails account for about 80% of incarcerations. Although crime rates have decreased since the 1990s, incarceration rates have soared. According to a recent Prison Policy Initiative publication, approximately 2.3 million people are currently “locked up” in the United States. Of these 2.3 million people, 1 in 5 are locked up for a drug related offense. Statistics show that prisoners and felons imprisoned for drug related crimes are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. The mass incarceration issue in the United States derives from the many arrests associated with these “offenses” regarding drugs and the war on drugs.

Mass incarceration is a large-scale problem that has emerged in recent decades. The reason for this lies in new laws and policies that crackdown on drug-related offenses. Since these policies have taken effect, the percent of people in prisons and jails has grown by 500% (The Sentencing Project). The 2015 population of inmates in either prison or jail was 2,173,800, this makes the United States the world leader in number of incarcerated people (The Sentencing Project). However, the rise in jail and prison populations has not spanned equally among races. The population of prisoners in 2015 was 1,476,847, with 523,000 of those prisoners being African American (The Sentencing Project). African Americans make up 13% of the population in the United

A racial hierarchy exists relating to blacks and the criminal justice system in the subject of drug abuse arrests and convictions. Government research according to The Sentencing Project (2011) has shown that drug use among blacks is no higher than use among whites but yet seventy-nine percent of drug defendants in 2011were black. The participants in the criminal justice system such as police, judges, lawyers and corrections officers may be part of a dominant group and use their ethnocentrism to create bias and discrimination based on cultural differences. There is the overt bias and prejudice that an urban area with large black and minority populations is crime ridden. This in turn is cause for over policing with arrests of blacks more often in open air drug markets. A study done by Katherine Beckett (2006) in Seattle showed the disparity between white and black drug dealers in different ethnographic

However, those cases should be the only cases that would be permissible. As for reducing racial disparities in adult offenders, along with reformation of poorer communities, we need to focus on fair representation and sentencing for minorities. National surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice find that while African Americans may be subject to traffic stops by police at similar rates to whites, they are three times as likely to be searched after being stopped. The “war on drugs,” acknowledged above, has been a big success in many areas, but it also represents a substantial part of the imbalanced rates of incarceration. In 2005, African Americans represented 14% of current drug users, yet they constituted 33.9% of the people arrested for a drug offense and 53% of people sentenced to prison for a drug offense. Indication of racial profiling by law enforcement does not mean that all officers’ practice this way, it just goes to show that such behaviors still persist to some degree and clearly prevent efforts to promote racial justice. (Justice for All, American Bar

The war on drugs brought the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world, mandatory minimum sentences, and racial disparity in our criminal justice system. The war on drugs greatly affected the way policing works in America. Policing and racism have always intertwined in America but the war on drugs fueled it. As a result minorities were the most affected by policing. During the war on drugs funding for police departments rose to support it, Cooper (2015) reports that a 2012 study done by lynch states that “between 1992 and 2008 state and local departments expenditures on police doubled from $131 per capita to $260 per capita” (p. 1189) This increase in law enforcement

A study discovered that "in 1992 alone, two-thirds of those admitted to state prisons for drug offenses were black. And the number of black males held in prisons, as a proportion of the adult population, nearly doubled from 3.5 percent in 1985 to 6.7 percent in 1994. (The corresponding number for whites in 1994 was only 0.9 percent)," (Loury). This again highlights the issue of racism involved in the way that drug enforcement is treated and the people who are targeted considering that white people and black people do use drugs at the same rate. The overpopulation of the United States’ prisons is costing taxpayers a high price and does not result in the lowering of crime rates of drug use or selling rates. The level of recidivism, which is when a prisoner is released and then returns back to prison on different charges, has stayed the same. The rate of recidivism remaining constant is evidence that imprisonment and harsh sentences are not effective in reducing the drug problem in the United

In October of 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared war on drugs. The Reagan administration launched a public relations campaign designed to change the public perception of drug use and the threat posed by illegal drugs. Presidents Bush and Clinton continued the Reagan administration 's anti-drug policies. President Bush established a national office of drug policy, appointed a drug "czar," increased anti-drug spending and intensified drug law enforcement efforts. President Clinton, for his part, increased the anti-drug budget by twenty-five percent, proposed expanded drug testing rules and intensified efforts toward drug interdiction and prosecution (Nunn386-87).

In 1971 President Nixon declared an all-out war on drugs, now over a million non-violent drug offenders live behind bars. The war on drugs has been the longest, most costly, and destructive war in the US history as of today (Booth , 2007). The war on drugs focuses on the poor people, and not the bankers that launder the money. In 1973 Nixon created the DEA, which stands for Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA is a federal agency responsible for enforcing laws and regulations governing narcotics, and controlled substances. Their job is to immobilize drug trafficking organizations. When Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971, the federal budget was 101 million dollars, going into the year 2000; the federal budget allegation was 20 billion dollars. Half of what we spend in the court systems and prison is drug related (Booth , 2007).

“There is an undoubted race element, too. In 2010, black people were five times more likely to be incarcerated, and those figures are unlikely to have improved since then” (Holder).The war on drugs have affected mostly poor black communities of color even though black people are just as likely as whites to sell and use illegal drugs.

From policing to a trial and the trail sentencing racial disparities persist at every stage of the United States Criminal Justice System. There are not a single factor that has contributed to racial profiling than the War on Drugs. All ethnic groups use and sell drugs at the same rate. Blacks and Hispanics comprise over 50% of these offenses. Whether on the federal, state, or local level police officers exercise discretion when determining whether someone’s behavior is suspicious enough that an investigation is done. Racial bias keeps more people of color in prisons and on probation than ever

Despite the fact that slavery was abolished 300 years ago, the hegemon of racial profiling in 2017 is perpetuated locally as well as worldwide via the media and other factors that foster blackness and racist association of dark skin with criminality and wrongdoing (9). The false perception that African Americans violate drug laws in greater numbers justifies racial profiling and disparities in rates of arrest and incarceration of blacks and other ethnic minorities Egregious actions as most arrests centered on racial profiling are made for the crime of misdemeanor drug possession (10). The Irony is “drug possession is a crime every drug user commits” and, in the United States, most drug users are white, yet a white drug user is not arbitrarily racially profiled, stopped and frisked at the same rate as blacks other minorities. And whites may be given a warning by police to get help for their addiction problem or recreational drug use if it is out of

The United States have seen a rush in incarnations by placing many people in jail more than the last four decades. Mostly because of the war on drugs. So far whites and blacks have been involved in many drug offenses, possession and sales, at a very comparable rate. “While African Americans comprise 13% of the US population and 14% of monthly drug users they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses” (Marc Mauer). The police usually stop blacks and Latinos at rates higher than whites. Within New York City, the people of color make up about half of the city’s population, while 80% of all the police stops were of blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked. While blacks and Latinos are stopped 85% were frisked according to information provided by the NYPD stop and frisk data report. The data is almost the same in most other places in America. The America civil liberties union found blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites in California.

The criminal justice system and the prison system serves as a control. Policies, laws and legislature is put in place to work against African Americans. It works as a guarantee that they will be admitted into the criminal system which will castigate them and hold them captive for the rest of their lives, preventing them from becoming upwardly mobile. It is hard to believe that “about 90 percent of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense in Illinois are African American. (Alexander, 2010). Yet the crime rate in Chicago cannot be contained. Many are still dying by guns which has become an epidemic, a public health issue, and ma and many remain as they were then abusing drugs or involved in the trafficking of. Money that should be spent on treating addiction and counselling is directed towards the war.

The War on Drugs is a term that is commonly applied to the campaign of prohibition of drugs. The goal of this campaign is to reduce the illegal drug trade across America. This term “ War on Drugs” was used during Nixon’s campaign in which he declared War on Drugs during a press conference in 1971. Following this declaration many organizations were created to stop the spread of drugs, like the DEA and Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement. Note that Nixon’s approach to this problem was to fund treatment rather than law enforcement. After Nixon’s retirement from office, most of the funding went from going into treatment to the law enforcement. Which militarized the police force giving the officer’s military weapons and gear. With this, the sentencing for possessing drugs was changed as well, resulting incarcerations rates to increase overtime. The increase of incarceration rates started to create many patterns that were soon noticeable. The funding’s that go into the law enforcement has shown to greatly have an affect on the incarceration rates.