Reply #41: You really think drug abuse is a cause [View All]

[AP]

of (rather than a correlary with) high incarceration rates?

The penalties for intention to distribute are way higher than for possession of amounts which suggest you only use drugs. You may not even use drugs, but have to sell them becuase it's the only job you can get, and you'll go to jail for a long long time. What good is a drug treatment program to you? It's not going to solve your real problems which is that we have structurally poverty in black communities which the government doesn't care to fix.

Your last sentence could produce a book-length argument if I were to address it fully. Suffices to say that DA's have lots of discretion about what they're going to pursue and that there's a very complicated nexus of political will, cultural influences and socio-economics which determines who goes to jail, and sending lots of black men to jail is a product of that complicated nexus. You can't seriously say that DA's have sent tons of black men to jail because that's the fact of American life, black men are more criminal than any other demographic and their convictions are the sausage that comes out the other end of rational, efficient criminal justice sausage machine.

It also suffices to say that Howard Dean and I have VERY different views about this issue and I would hate to vote for someone with views like his.