The Drug War and Racial Profiling

We hear a lot of talk on the news about racial profiling. Usually we hear it when a famous rapper is annoyed that his Hollywood house party got crashed by the cops looking for dope. However, these isolated and glamorized accounts largely make America turn the other way on the subject of racial profiling. However, the truth is that racial profiling is indeed a dark reality in the world of United States law enforcement, particularly with regard to the War on Drugs. Don't believe me? Let the numbers speak for themselves.

The ratios between numbers of blacks living in a particular state and the numbers of blacks in prison in those states shows a marked disparity along racial lines. The lowest ratio of black percentage of state population vs. black percentage of state prison population is in Mississippi, which has a 1.9 ratio. South Dakota has the highest such ratio, with a whopping 11.1 ratio in South Dakota state prisons. What is even more interesting is that only 0.6% of South Dakota's population is black. Further statistics from a 2002 report from the U.S. Department of Justice reveals that nearly 5% of all black men in America are behind bars, as opposed to 0.6% of white men. Are black people much more violent than white people?

Much of the swelling numbers of prison inmates in America's prisons has nothing to do with violent crime, but with drug-related offenses. According to 2002 U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics, the number of people incarcerated for drug-related charges has increased by twelve times over the past twenty-five years. Furthermore, the same kinds of racial lines emerge when examining drug charge statistics. According to a National Household Survey on Drug Abuse conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association in 1998, 72% of drug users were white, 15% were black, and 10% were Hispanic. However, the number of drug-related arrests, convictions, and incarcerations show a very different racial discrepancy. Blacks constituted 37% of drug arrests in 1998, 42% of drug convictions serving time in federal prisons, and 58% of drug convictions serving time in state prisons. Two out of five imprisoned blacks are sent to state prison on drug-related charges, yet only 15% of the drug-using population is black. If you combine these statistics with the ratios of black inmates in state prisons, you start to see a rather disturbing trend forming.

Using data compiled from a 1996 National Corrections Reporting Program study as well as information from the 2000 census, we can see further disparities between black and white incarcerations in state prison due to drug offenses. There is no state in America in which whites outnumber blacks in state prisons on drug-related charges, even though whites account for nearly five times the percentage of the drug-using population that blacks constitute. Illinois leads the pack in imprisoning far more blacks on drug charges than whites, with 1146 blacks versus 20 whites. That's fifty-seven times more blacks in jail for drug use, sale, or possession than whites. Even the tiny island state of Hawaii produced five times more black drug offenders in jail than whites. I'd say that's a rather marked discrepancy.

If whites are responsible for the majority of the drug use in the United States, then why are so many blacks put in jail for drug-related charges? Do blacks smoke more weed or do more coke out in public places? Are they somehow less clever than whites in eluding the authorities? Are these statistics all some sort of elaborate hoax designed to discredit law enforcement agencies due to some kind of black or Hispanic agenda? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding NO. The sad truth is that racial profiling exists to a large extent in arrests, prosecutions, and imprisonment in relation to drugs. Thus, the War on Drugs that was intensified during the 1980s and beyond has done less to stave drug use in the United States and more to exacerbate racial divisions, disparities, and tensions.