They are the mechanism generating most of the racial disparity
in arrests and sentencing. The metrics by which the DEA, police and prosecutors are judged and PAID are arrests and years sentenced. Ostensibly, these laws are color-blind, but anybody who can read a map can see that bonuses for the authrities from arrests within 1000 feet of a school, park, or government housing project largely exempt the suburbs and target cities where large swaths of neighborhoods are predominantly Black. The authorities respond to incentives which have HUGE built-in racial biases.
From http://www.justicestrategies.org/news/2006/03/drug-free-school-zone-laws-questioned
"Drug-Free School Zone Laws Questioned
National Racial Disparity
Sentencing Policy
The Associated Press
By: David Crary
Published: March 23, 2006
In reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, laws creating drug-free zones around schools spread nationwide. Now, hard questions are being raised — by legislators, activists, even law enforcement officials — about the fairness and effectiveness of those laws. In New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington state, bills have been proposed to sharply reduce the size of the zones. A former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts reviewed hundreds of drug-free-zone cases, and found that less than 1 percent involved drug sales to youths.
Citing such developments, the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute is issuing a report Thursday that contends such laws, which generally carry extra-stiff mandatory penalties, have done little to safeguard young people and are enforced disproportionately on blacks and Hispanics. "For two decades, policy-makers have mistakenly assumed that these statutes shield children from drug activity," said report co-author Judith Greene, a New York-based researcher. "We found no evidence that drug-free zone laws protect children, but ample evidence that the laws hurt communities of color and contribute to mounting correctional costs." ,,, "When the overlap of zones in densely populated areas covers the entire city, the idea of special protection loses its meaning -- people don't know they're in a school zone," said Ben Barlyn, a deputy attorney general and executive director of the sentencing review panel. "It would be as if we made the entire New Jersey Turnpike a reduced speed zone."
Barlyn said New Jersey prosecutors and police chiefs had no objection to shrinking the zones. In Washington, state Sen. Adam Kline has proposed reducing drug-free school zones from 1,000 feet to 200 feet, and limiting the law's application to regular school hours. In Connecticut, a hearing is scheduled Friday on a bill that would reduce school zones from 1,500 feet to 200 feet. At recent meetings, activists with Connecticut's A Better Way Foundation -- which supports the bill -- have displayed maps of major cities showing huge sections designated as drug-free zones. A map of New Haven indicated that Yale University's golf course was the only large part of the city not encompassed in one of the overlapping zones.
Most states have drug-free-zone laws; they often entail mandatory prison terms that preclude such options as probation or treatment. Lolita Buckner Inniss, a Cleveland State University law professor, is a vocal critic of the laws. Her research found that drug dealers in inner cities and compact rural towns were disproportionately likely to incur the extra penalties, in contrast to dealers in suburbs where zones covered relatively small portions of the communities. That urban-suburban split has the effect of making minorities more likely to bear the brunt of tougher sentencing rules, she said. "I've been dissatisfied by how the public mutely accepts these laws," she said",
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