The most racist government policy in America.. And no one wants to talk about it.

[Jonathan50]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0818/p02s01-usju.html

According to current statistics a black male in the USA has about a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime.

For a white male the chances are about one in seventeen of doing hard time.

Now I'm about as aryan as it's possible to get, and if you don't think so you can kiss my bony, lily white butt. :)

Aryan or no, the figures above trouble me greatly.

I firmly believe in equality before the law and given the statistics above, equality before the law is a complete fiction in the America of today, with black males going to prison at a rate more than five times that of white males.

Would anyone care to discuss this?

[slackmaster]

1. Cited article provides no evidence for the "government policy" you allege

Do you have something more substantive than a statistic which might be the result of an underlying cause other than a government policy?

According to current statistics a black male in the USA has about a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime.

That's a statement of fact, not a policy. The question you should be asking IMO is WHY? And I think the answers are rather obvious if you think about it just a little.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. I can think of two possibilities.

1. Black people are racially more likely to be criminals.

2. Racist societies/criminal justice system.

Which do you think it is?

[slackmaster]

7. Racism is institutionalized in the society

That's pretty obvious. Societal racism does not equate to a "racist government policy", in fact official government policy is clearly anti-racist.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. If the society is racist...

then doesn't that mean that the government is going to be racist as well in a representative democracy?

[slackmaster]

14. Not necessarily

The society is also predominantly Christian, but we have mechanisms built in to the system to prevent institutionalized Christianity.

I know that's not an ideal example, but if not for those policies we'd definitely have an official state religion and all the problems that flow from that.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. Yeah, we're supposed to have systems in place...

to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

It ain't working to well though.

[slackmaster]

18. What would you do to address the high incarceration rates of black Americans

?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

24. End the war on drugs.

Prosecute corrupt race police officers.

Provide working class jobs for the inner city, and fund inner city schools with at least as much as the suburban schools are getting.

You?

[slackmaster]

29. I absolutely agree on ending the war on drugs and funding schools

Not sure how one would go about providing jobs. That's a little vague. Are you suggesting a wave of government-sponsored programs like we had in the Great Depression?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

35. Maybe.

I'm wondering if tax and tarriff incentives might be better. Break back some of those industrial jobs from China.

[ikojo]

41. In many instances city schools get more

money than do suburban and rural area schools. What many liberals or progressives don't want to acknowledge is the corruption and cronyism that exists within many large city school boards.

The suburbs mentioned in the snippets below are Clayton MO (a very wealthy suburb not too far from the city of St Louis. Clayton schools take part in the desegregation program, otherwise its schools would be mostly white.) and University City (a working class to upper middle class inner ring suburb that abuts the city of St Louis. A majority of the students, especially past sixth grade are black. 30 years ago U City was a predominantly Jewish suburb.)

This article is several years old but it shows at least that some suburbs receive near the same amount per student as the city schools (which recently lost their accreditation.)

http://www.westendword.com/moxie/news/archived-features/lawsuit-seeks-to-equalize-2.shtml


Average funding per student ranges from $4,600 a year for school districts in southwest Missouri to almost $13,000 a year for some districts in suburban St. Louis.

snip

A model district like Clayton shows how important generous allocations of public money are in educating students, Bartlett said. At $12,939 of spending per pupil per year, Clayton is at the very top of the scale.

snip

St. Louis Public Schools spends an average of $8,527 per student per year with $3,411 coming from state aid. The district is not part of the lawsuit.

snip

In University City the average spending per student per year is $8,850 with $2,059 in state aid. The school district did not have a comment regarding the lawsuit.

[EFerrari]

13. So, how does a racist society produce an equal rights government?

:wow:

[slackmaster]

We've been trying to for more than 40 years now

Mostly by erring on the side of giving victims of racism extra consideration e.g. Affirmative Action and similar policies.

It's going to take a long time to undo the damage of the past.

[EFerrari]

22. I agree. Buit we vastly over estimate how far we've come. n/t

[slackmaster]

26. I wish I knew of a solution

.

[treestar]

17. But the law is broken so much more often than the cops can keep up with

We have too many laws, so who they get enforced against can be meaningful, because it's the government's choice of who to go after and who to let slide.

Take the immigration laws post 911. Every Arabic male illegally in the U.S. or even arguably illegally in the US was hunted down and detained and deported - people who were not Arabic and male who were equally as illegal we considerably less likely to be the object of enforcement.

Or if you are self employed, they are more likely to do audits to enforce the tax laws against you. When there is no reason to assume you are more likely to violate the tax laws than people who are employed by big corporations.

[EFerrari]

10. Let me go out on a fake limb and guess.

[Jonathan50]

45. Sorry for taking so long to reply, I got unexpectedly called away on business..

You don't think that the War On (some) Drugs is a government policy?

That is what is driving the majority of the difference in incarceration between black and whites.

[slackmaster]

52. The War On (some) Drugs is not now, nor was it ever intended as a race war

It was started with good intentions, but has turned into one as a result of the chronic economic underclass condition of some blacks. Their high incarceration rate is a result of their being poor, not a result of a coordinated national policy.

[natrat]

2. what can ya say-born in the ghetto,no hope, very few chances

a culture where if you are successful people think you are a scumbag sellout-if it were me i would have a hard time not stealing shit and selling drugs

[Rosemary2205]

19. Excuse me.

As someone who comes from "that" supposed culture -- :eyes:

You should really hand that pile back to whoever gave it to you.

[emilyg]

39. I agree with you.

[hughee99]

3. What government policy?

I agree that the statistics are appalling, but what "racist government policy" is the cause of this?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Here's a good example.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061101620.html

[slackmaster]

12. Are black people racially predisposed to using crack as opposed to hydrochloride?

The two substances have quite different pharmacokinetics. They are different in the somewhat same sense that morphine and heroin do - The form that results in faster transport through the blood-brain barrier has more immediate effects and greater potential for addiction.

I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, I really think the penalties should be the same (and a lot less than they are).

[EFerrari]

20. No. They are just predisposed to have much more police contact.

(Because they seem to be so much attractive to the police. One of my friends was stopped regularly for driving while black. She eventually was fired for being late to work.)

More police contact pretty much ensures you will wind up in custody at some point. And it gets more dismal from there.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

21. No, they're sociologically predisposed to it.

They haven't got different pharmacokinetics.

Heroin and morphine are two seperate compounds. Crack cocaine and powder cocaine are the same thing.

[slackmaster]

25. Heroin is diacetyl morphine

The final step in manufacturing it is to treat pure morphine alkaloid (which is insoluble in water) with glacial acetic acid. The main part of the molecule is unchanged in that process.

Once it's in your bloodstream, the two are identical as are their metabolytes (and the same is true of cocaine alkaloid v. cocaine hydrocholoride).

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

34. Oh good god no.

The pharmacophore of morphine and heroin are the same, but those two acetyl groups have a major, major impact on the biochemistry. Heroin can cross the blood-brain barrier far more easily than morphine can, getting to the opiods in the brain. Yes, heroin eventually metabolises back to morphine, sure, but they're radically different molecules.

Crack cocaine and powder cocaine? Nope, they're the same damn molecule.

[EFerrari]

27. I don't even think that's true. My youngest has been doing crack

for years. If he weren't blonde, I'd be visiting him in San Quentin. And, none of this gives me a bit of pleasure.

[slackmaster]

30. Sorry to hear that

I hope he recovers before it ruins his health or kills him (or lands him in prison).

[EFerrari]

32. Life is life. But I know if he were black, he'd be in prison already.

I don't pretend to have a solution. But discrimination is poisonous for us all. And we need to call it out if only to bring it to awareness.

We'd like to believe this isn't present in America. But it's better to know what we have on our hands imho, than continue this terrible cycle. Tell me what I'm up against so I can mobilize. :shrug:

[hughee99]

31. This article seems to be about the length of the sentence, isn't it?

Not conviction vs. acquittal. The article in the OP is about your chance of spending (some) time in prison based on ethnic background. If you get convicted of dealing crack or powder, you're going to do some prison time. I didn't see anything in your link to indicate that because of this policy, blacks go to jail and whites don't. While the sentencing sounds disproportionate and unfair, I don't see how it would result in the disparity in the statistics. Even if all the cocaine dealing sentences were 3 months for anyone convicted of dealing (regardless of the amount they were caught with) wouldn't the statistics remain the same?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

37. Hmm.

The article says that 5 g of crack cocaine gets the same mandatory sentence as 500 g of powder cocaine.

Are there first time offenders who have between 5 and 500 g of powder cocaine that doen't see the inside of a jail?

[hughee99]

47. If it's "mandatory" then they'd go to jail, wouldn't they?

First time offender or not. My point was that the OP link doesn't address the length of the sentence, just incarceration, while your link doesn't seem to address incarceration, just length of sentence. If this is the case, then I don't see how this is an example of a racist government policy that is causing the statistics in the OP. It's certainly an issue, but a separate issue.

[ikojo]

44. Blacks tend to go to jail for offenses that whites don't

because many do not have access to the funds to pay for a lawyer. Whites more than blacks are more likely to own a home and as a result of that home ownership they can access the equity in their home to pay a lawyer rather than rely on an overworked public defender.

It's all about access to MONEY..

which makes it about something most Americans are loath to discuss more than race....CLASS.

OJ got of because of his CLASS and access to MONEY.

[hughee99]

48. I agree...

I think a significant factor is the disproportionate percentage of blacks living in poverty and unable to pay for the same quality legal service that many whites can afford.

[stillcool]

40. Oh come now...we all know what policy

started all this:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/121304.html
America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb
By Robert Parry
December 13, 2004

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy – the Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Without doubt, Webb’s series had its limitations. It primarily tracked one West Coast network of contra-cocaine traffickers from the early-to-mid 1980s. Webb connected that cocaine to an early “crack” production network that supplied Los Angeles street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, leading to Webb’s conclusion that contra cocaine fueled the early crack epidemic that devastated Los Angeles and other U.S. cities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Counterattack
When black leaders began demanding a full investigation of these charges, the Washington media joined the politcal Establishment in circling the wagons. It fell to Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s right-wing Washington Times to begin the counterattack against Webb’s series. The Washington Times turned to some former CIA officials, who participated in the contra war, to refute the drug charges.

But – in a pattern that would repeat itself on other issues in the following years – the Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers quickly lined up behind the conservative news media. On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page article knocking down Webb’s story.

The Post’s approach was twofold: first, it presented the contra-cocaine allegations as old news – “even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers,” the Post reported – and second, the Post minimized the importance of the one contra smuggling channel that Webb had highlighted – that it had not “played a major role in the emergence of crack.” A Post side-bar story dismissed African-Americans as prone to “conspiracy fears.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Consequences
To this day, no editor or reporter who missed the contra-drug story has been punished for his or her negligence. Indeed, many of them are now top executives at their news organizations. On the other hand, Gary Webb’s career never recovered.

At Webb’s death, however, it should be noted that his great gift to American history was that he – along with angry African-American citizens – forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any American administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans.
-----------------
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

So the government floods the streets with cocaine and then claims 'war on drugs'

In 1985 one out of every 320 Americans were in jail.
In 1995 one out of every 167 Americans were in jail.
Between1980 and 1994, the number of people in federal and state prisons increased 221%.
Today, 2 million Americans are in prison.
1.2 million are African-American men.
While there is debate over their underlying causes, these staggering statistics are generally thought to result from rigid drug laws, mandatory minimum sentences and increasingly tough
legislation— such as California’s "three strikes" law. One fact remains undisputed: prisons have become big business.
-------------------
Big name corporations compete with each other to underwrite prison construction with private, tax-exempt bonds and without voter approval. More and more states across the country are implementing mandatory labor for inmates, necessitating partnerships with outside industry.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prison Partners
In the tiny town of Lockhart, Texas a private prison run by Wakenhut (a for-profit private corporation) does business with a company called LTI. In this partnership the prisoners assemble circuit boards bound for hi-tech corporations. For LTI, moving manufacturing to the Lockhart prison was a no-brainer. There they found a captive workforce that did not require benefits or vacation pay, major tax incentives and a brand new assembly plant rented for only a symbolic fee. As a result, LTI’s plant in Austin, Texas was shut down and 150 people lost their jobs. In Michigan, through a similar arrangement, the majority of Brill Manufacturing Company’s workforce lost their jobs to state prison inmates.http://www.itvs.org/shift/prison.html

and my how business has grown:

IN THESE TIMES MARCH 17, 1997
Prisons America's Newest Growth Industry:
With Incarceration Rates Soaring, It Was Only Matter of Time Before Entrepreneurs Sniffed Out New Business Opportunity
By Kristin Bloomer
Lockhart, Texas
------------------------------------------
-In 1995, allegations of rape and assault at the privately run High Plains Youth Center in Brush, Colo., prodded the state to admit it could not guarantee inmates' safety at private prisons. Run by the Rebound Corp. in Denver, the 180-bed juvenile facility houses youths from more than two dozen states.

-The Colorado ACLU has sued the Bobby Ross Group, charging delayed access to medical care, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, inexperienced and under-trained staff, and inadequate programs and services at its private prison in Karnes City.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since the prisons are on private property, the Texas Department of Corrections has its hands tied when it comes to protecting prisoners' First Amendment rights in such cases, according to Glen Castlebury, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Corrections. "There's no regulation whatsoever of the private prisons (in these matters)," he says. "They're scot-free to do whatever they please."

-Some of Wall Street's largest investment houses, including Goldman Sachs & Co. and Smith Barney Inc., are competing to underwrite the bonds for the prisons. (See "Jail house stock," by Ken Silverstein, page 18.) Other huge companies also have a stake. American Express, for example, invested approximately $31 million in the $38 million Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton, Okla., according to the prison's warden, Tom Martin. Great Plains is a private prison that houses inmates from North Carolina.

-Private prison companies have some powerful allies in the fight for stiffer sentences and more prison spending. For example, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which has grown from 4,000 to 23,000 in the last decade, gave more than $1 million to various California state politicians in 1996. The prison lobby is also supported by the National Rifle Association. Armed with an agenda of deflecting public fear away from guns and toward people, the NRA successfully lobbies for prison construction and three-strikes-and-you're-out laws. (See "The NRA strikes Back." (By Chris Bryson)
http://www.prop1.org/legal/prisons/970317itt.htm

Captive Labor
America's Prisoner's As Corporate Workforce
By Gordon Lafer The American Prospect, 1 September 1999
http://www.postcarbon.org/node/2244
When most of us think of convicts at work, we picture them banging out license plates or digging ditches. Those images, however, are now far too limited to encompass the great range of jobs that America's prison workforce is performing. If you book a flight on TWA, you'll likely be talking to a prisoner at a California correctional facility that the airline uses for its reservations service. Microsoft has used Washington State prisoners to pack and ship Windows software. AT&T has used prisoners for telemarketing; Honda, for manufacturing parts; and even Toys "R" Us, for cleaning and stocking shelves for the next day's customers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But the attractions of prison labor extend well beyond low wages. The prison labor system does away with statutory protections that progressives and unions have fought so hard to achieve over the last 100 years. Companies that use prison labor create islands of time in which, in terms of labor relations at least, it's still the late nineteenth century. Prison employers pay no health insurance, no unemployment insurance, no payroll or Social Security taxes, no workers' compensation, no vacation time, sick leave, or overtime. In fact, to the extent that prisoners have "benefits" like health insurance, the state picks up the tab. Prison workers can be hired, fired, or reassigned at will. Not only do they have no right to organize or strike; they also have no means of filing a grievance or voicing any kind of complaint whatsoever. They have no right to circulate an employee petition or newsletter, no right to call a meeting, and no access to the press. Prison labor is the ultimate flexible and disciplined workforce.
All of these conditions apply when the state administers the prison. But the prospect of such windfall profits from prison labor has also fueled a boom in the private prison industry. Such respected money managers as Allstate, Merrill Lynch, and Shearson Lehman have all invested in private prisons. As with other privatized public services, companies that operate private prisons aim to make money by operating corrections facilities for less than what the state pays them. If they can also contract prisoners out to private enterprises—forcing inmates to work either for nothing or for a very small fraction of their "wages" and pocketing the remainder of those "wages" as corporate profit—they can open up a second revenue stream. That would make private prisons into both public service contractors and the highest-margin temp agencies in the nation.
http://www.postcarbon.org/node/2244

and look what how far we've come!

To some in Paris, sinister past is back
In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves
a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it 'a signal to black folks.'
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 12, 2007
----------------------------------------------
There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.

There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students.

And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.
Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703120170mar12,1,1921178.story?coll=chi&ctrack=1&cset=true

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: February 28, 2007
Texan Calls for Takeover of State’s Juvenile Schools
AUSTIN, Tex., Feb. 27 — A long-simmering scandal over sexual abuse of juveniles at schools for youthful offenders broke into the open on Tuesday with an outraged state senator calling for a takeover of the troubled Texas Youth Commission.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senators questioned Mr. Nichols about the transfer in 2003 of one supervisor, Ray Brookins, to the West Texas State School from another school for juvenile offenders at San Saba, after pornography had been found on his computer. Mr. Brookins later became assistant superintendent at Pyote and was cited by the Texas Rangers for sexual contact with juveniles there, senators said. Another supervisor at Pyote, John Paul Hernandez, was also reported by the Texas Rangers to have engaged in sexual contact with students, senators said.

Both supervisors left the youth agency and are under investigation, said the Ward County district attorney, Randall Reynolds.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Hernandez became principal at a charter school in Midland, the Richard Milburn
Academy, said Norman Hall, the school’s superintendent. The school did not know of Mr. Hernandez’s history when it hired him, Mr. Hall said, and put him on leave several weeks ago.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The superintendent at Pyote, Chip Harrison, who knew of the accusations against Mr. Brookins and Mr. Hernandez and kept them on the staff, senators said, is now director of juvenile corrections for the commission, in charge of several schools.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Nichols called him “one of our most experienced superintendents,” setting off a gasp from parents.
Stacie Semrad contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28youth.html?ex=1182657600&en=5ae3da15515314a5&ei=5070

How's that for policy?

[hughee99]

50. So the its the war on drugs and 3 strikes that are the "racist government policies"

That's what I got from the first three articles. I'm not sure if this explains all the statistics but you certainly make the case.

As for the last three articles, I don't see how any of them relate to a racist government policy. Sure it benefits business to use convict labor, yes there's a particular judge is Lamar county who should be in jail himself, and yes there are people in the Texas juvenile corrections system that are getting away with abuse, but none of those things are evidence of some specific government policy that causes blacks to go to jail in much higher percentages than whites.

[Buck Turgidson]

5. War on Drugs War on Blacks

Nixon started it. Still going on.

[indepat]

43. The war on drugs and the burgeoning economic underclass fashioned and championed by 'pukes

are two pillars coupled with surely the worst health care delivery among first-world nations, also at the behest of 'pukes, comprise the 'puke trifecta on poor people.

[treestar]

8. The law is enforced most strictly against the black population

And I've seen it in action. Make an application to the government, and you better have it all perfect, there will be no overlooking the teeniest, technical little mistake, which would not be allowed to trump substance and justice for the white person.

Or you're just more likely to get caught from being observed more closely. Whites must be doing drugs too, so how come they don't swell the prison population? The cops don't cruise majority neighborhoods as often, to see things that are "suspicious."

The statistics on the death penalty are telling. It was the race of the victim that determined whether the defendant would get it - killers of white persons got it more often than killers of black persons, no matter what the race of the killer, according to a study I once read.

[Warpy]

11. Few jobs

so a lot of guys turn to the one sure moneymaker, drugs. That is the real economic engine of a lot of desperately poor mostly black areas, drugs. The gummint decided that the economy of poor areas oughta be illegal, and yes, Anslinger was a consummate bigot, so anybody who engages in it risks prison.

And that is why black men go to prison more than white men do. Their avenue of economic opportunity was declared illegal. That very illegality fueled a lot of other crime.

Once the insanity of the drug war is ended, the rates will tend to equalize over time.

[baldguy]

15. The corporatocracy needs a permanent underclass to function & exist.

If there were true equality in education, employment, social & civil opportunities the current power structure would totally collapse.

When hogs like O'Reilly, hannity, Savage & Limbaugh whine about how afraid they are of America changing THIS is the kind of thing they're protecting.

[malaise]

23. It is the new plantation

because white men are terrified of the black male.

[butterfly77]

36. Thank you!

[ismnotwasm]

28. Institutionalized racism and Insane drug laws

Those numbers are very disturbing. I always feel that the prison industry needs fodder to feed it. One of the areas I can put a tinfoil hat on in a minute, and not feel strange. Off the top of my head without looking anything up, I seem to remember crimes rates have a ebb and flow, also they very from state to state. This, unfortunately is not a new discussion and things seem to have gotten even worse.

[glowing]

33. Its complicated. There are many components that make these

statistics. There are a lot of social problems that relate to incarceration. 1st, you need to break down the statistics... what arrests are related to violence, drugs, etc. That would give you a clearer picture. Then you need to break down the stats into zip codes. Where do the incarcerated people come from. You cannot analyze the stats without breaking these numbers down into sub-groups.

I think that racial profiling does happen. I dated a black man, and he was pulled over a lot more than his white friends. He was in college, worked, came from a good family with a military dad, yet he was still pulled over, had the dogs come out, and had a gun held at his head by the police. So, that has a factor in people that the police are attracting their attention to for arrests to happen in the first place. But then you have trials, by peers. And lady justice isn't so blind all the time. I was on a jury a few months back. The black male was charged with resisting and office, resisting arrest and assalt and battery on law enforcement officers. In the end we decided that he was guilty only of resisting an officers request (he refused to give his I.D.). The rest was bogus trumped up charges. I only wonder what another jury would have done? It was a case that could have gone either way. And I'm sure that the a guilty verdict would have sent him to jail for a while. I think the resisting an officer one is a minor offence and would warrant probation or a fine. The judge seemed pissed at us, the ADA was pissed, and the father of the boy was in tears. I only wonder how many cases are just lost or whatever because a public defender spent 5 mins on the case? The boy's father, in this case, had spent a lot of money on good defense. They really helped to round out the case and bring the real truth to light.

Anyway, I think that there are problems with the whole system. There are also disadvantages in some areas of this country (ever go into the projects) that leave people in this country without many choices--(that's why I said break it down to offenses and zip code)

Its a broad area. My stance: the war on drugs is a waste of money and time and resources, and the money should be spent on social programs, day-care, after school programs, computers, books, education, food... Things like this help. When you have nothing around you that looks like hope, what would you do? But this is only one aspect (a large aspect), but only one of the many crimes that you can be locked up for.

[Jonathan50]

51. The county police near my home...

Park on the side of the interstate at night facing directly toward the roadway with their lights on.

The only thing they can tell when the cars whizz by is the race of the driver and maybe the passengers.

That stretch of interstate is probably the most heavily used drug carrying corridor in the nation.

Now why do you think the police would do such a thing?

I've also witnessed motorcycle cops parked on the ramp to the interstate in such a manner that they can see down into the cars passing by.

I wonder why they would do that?

[eShirl]

38. can we get a 5th recommendation, please?

this is important imho

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

42. Try on being a FEMALE, of any race or creed.

Try that on.

We have to MAKE UP for, nuture, support, BE PRESENT,...and be 'grateful' for being 'counted'.

I am not a radical feminist. I LOVE feminity and the emotional INTELLIGENCE that females contribute to a world still dominated by chest-thumping, knuckle-dragging predators STILL fucking peace

[eridani]

46. Drug War Facts is a useful site

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/racepris.htm

According to the federal Household Survey, "most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998." And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%.

Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999), p. 13; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 343, Table 4.10, p. 435, Table 5.48, and p. 505, Table 6.52; Beck, Allen J., Ph.D. and Mumola, Christopher J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 10, Table 16; Beck, Allen J., PhD, and Paige M. Harrison, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p. 11, Table 16.


Among persons convicted of drug felonies in state courts, whites were less likely than African-Americans to be sent to prison. Thirty-three percent (33%) of convicted white defendants received a prison sentence, while 51% of African-American defendants received prison sentences. It should also be noted that Hispanic felons are included in both demographic groups rather than being tracked separately so no separate statistic is available.

Source: Durose, Matthew R., and Langan, Patrick A., Bureau of Justice Statistics, State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons, 1998 Statistical Tables (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, December 2001), Table 25, available on the web at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/scsc98st.htm, last accessed December 21, 2001.

[Jonathan50]

49. Nice post..

Thank you for that..

It makes the point very clearly.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

53. Read Freakonomics

If you control for income a black person is no more likely to commit a crime than his white counterpart...

[Progressive_In_NC]

54. It is, and always had been about economic factors....

White folks are more likely to do the drugs in their house and sleep it off in Suburbia. The folks that are pulled off the streets of bad neighborhoods are most likely of minority status.

My mother-in-law's neighbor is a construction company owner, they keep coke on the coffee table all the time. Don't even hide the instruments of their addiction. But they live in a $500,000 house in the suburbs, and guess what? The cops don't come out there.

He also sends his hispanic workers to pick up the packages. My ILs even called the cops once, and nobody came out for 3-4 days. If he lived in a high crime area, and was buying off the street, I'd bet he'd have been in jail a long time ago.

Race is a factor, but income has a lot to do with it to (at least in my opinion).