Same crime, more time
LE ROI BRASHEARS
Washington state is the third most prolific incarcerator of blacks for drug offenses in America. Even though blacks constitute only 3 percent of our population, 51 percent of all people sent to state prisons for drug offenses are black.
Regional studies such as Professor Katherine Beckett's masterful and meticulous "Race and Law Enforcement in Seattle" show, however, that blacks simply do not sell or consume illicit drugs in proportion to the disparity with which they are arrested and/or incarcerated for drugs.
In fact, in Washington, blacks consume illicit drugs at rates slightly under that of whites.
The "crack thang" does not account for the disparity. The U.S. Sentencing Commission estimates that 65 percent of crack users are white. However, 90 percent of federal crack cocaine defendants are black.
Richard Pryor's dark ironic humor said it best. "Go in there looking for justice," Pryor mused, "and that's all you'll find -- 'just us' (blacks)."
In Seattle in 2001, 2,181 blacks (51.9 percent of drug arrests for that year) were arrested for drug offenses, although African Americans are only 8.4 percent of Seattle's population. Contrast that with 1,798 arrests of whites (42.7 percent of the year's drug arrests) that constitute 73 percent of Seattle's population.
The 2001 report titled "Equity and Representation in Washington State: An Assessment of Disproportionality and Disparity in Felony Sentencing" revealed that King County African American males were sentenced to prison for drugs at a rate almost 25 times higher than white males. Same crime, more time.
African American women fared a bit better; they received drug-related prison sentences at a rate 20 times higher than that for white women. Same crime, more time.
http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/317...kfamily30.html