[Courtesy of The Sentencing Project]

Friends:

The Sentencing Project's new study, Disparity by Geography: The War on Drugs in America's Cities, is the first city-level analysis of drug arrests, examining data from 43 of the nation's largest cities between 1980-2003. The study found that since 1980, the rate of drug arrests in American cities for African Americans increased by 225%, compared to 70% among whites. Black arrest rates grew by more than 500% in 11 cities during this period and in nearly half of the cities, the odds of arrest for a drug offense among African Americans relative to whites more than doubled.

Among The Sentencing Project report's key findings:

- Six cities experienced more than a 500% rise in overall drug arrests between 1980 and 2003: Tucson (887%), Buffalo (809%), Kansas City (736%), Toledo (701%), Newark (663%), and Sacramento (597%).

- Extreme city variations in drug arrests point to local enforcement decisions as prime contributor to racial disparity.

- African American drug arrests increased 3.4 times the rate of whites despite similar rates of drug use.

The report was released in conjunction with Human Rights Watch's Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States, which documents that in 34 states the persistent racial disparities among drug offenders sent to prison. Both organizations urge public officials to restore fairness, racial justice and credibility to drug control efforts. They recommend public officials take a number of concrete steps, including:

Eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and restoring judicial discretion to sentencing of drug offenders;
Increasing public funding of substance abuse treatment and prevention outreach to make these readily available in communities of color in particular;
Enhancing public health-based strategies to reduce harms associated with drug abuse and reallocating public resources accordingly.

Both reports follow in the wake of the March 2008 recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The Committee urged that U.S. criminal justice policies and practices address the unwarranted racial disparities that have been documented at all levels of the system.

-The Sentencing Project

America's drug laws do not reference race, but the way they are enforced has a gravely disproportionate impact on African Americans, according to two reports released this week.

Break the Chains is actively involved in the campaign to equalize federal sentences for cocaine offenses.

Hosted by the NYU Wagner Criminal Justice Student Group, the Students of African Descent Alliance, and the Correctional Association of NY.

Join leading academicians, activists, political figures and lawyers in a discussion on a critical, oft neglected, public policy issue of the day: how police, prosecutorial and prison related practices lead to the dramatically disproportionate confinement of poor people of color.

Back in January, Sgt.

[Courtesy of The Sentencing Project]

Dear Friends:

Beginning today, the United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination will hold hearings in Geneva, Switzerland, to review racial inequities in the United States, including disparities in criminal sentencing.

The Sentencing Project submitted a report to the Committee in December in preparation for this week's hearings. The national criminal justice reform organization called upon the Committee to hold the U.S. government accountable for failing to ensure equality before the law. Notably, its report argues that the racially disparate impact of federal cocaine sentencing laws violate requirements of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), to which the U.S. is a signatory.

"The U.S. Government's harsh sentencing policy for low-level crack cocaine offenses has unfairly incarcerated a disproportionate number of African American citizens in federal prisons," said Ryan S. King, Policy Analyst at The Sentencing Project and co-author of its report to the Committee. "No other drug is punished as severely under federal law and no other law has done more to create racial disparity within federal prisons."

Under current law it takes 100 times the quantity of powder cocaine to trigger the same mandatory minimum sentence as crack cocaine. The result of this penalty differential is that the average federal crack cocaine sentence is more than three years longer than a conviction for a powder cocaine offense. This policy has had a catastrophic impact on the African American community because more than 80% of persons convicted of a federal crack cocaine offense are black, despite the fact that two-thirds of regular crack cocaine users are white or Latino. Meanwhile, only 27% of defendants convicted of powder cocaine offenses are African American.

The Committee will question representatives of the U.S. government Thursday and Friday in Geneva and offer concluding observations, including recommended reforms, in early March.

The Sentencing Project's report, Racial Disparities in Criminal Court Processing in the United States, offers input regarding the nation's compliance, and the need to reform current criminal justice practices.

It states that mandatory minimum sentencing practices, the result of 30 years of legislative policies that limit judicial discretion, have increased prosecutors' authority, greatly increased the length of imprisonment in many cases, and had a profound impact on African American and Latino communities.

Recommendations by The Sentencing Project urge that:

• The United States government should take steps to end all mandatory sentencing practices, returning sentencing discretion to judges;
• The United States government should amend penalties for crack cocaine to be equivalent with those for powder cocaine, at the current quantity threshold of powder cocaine; and
• The United States government should require the preparation of racial/ethnic impact statements to be submitted in conjunction with all sentencing and corrections legislation anticipated to effect measurable change on the incarcerated population.

This week's hearings occur during a time of unprecedented momentum for federal sentencing reform. In late 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission amended the federal sentencing guidelines to reduce the sentence length for certain individuals convicted of a crack cocaine offense and voted unanimously to apply this reform retroactively. The U.S. Supreme Court also ruled in December that federal judges should be able to consider the impact of the 100-to-1 disparity when deciding a defendant's sentence. Finally, there are currently seven bills that have been introduced in Congress that would address federal cocaine sentencing, and the Senate and House have scheduled hearings on the issue this month.

This report to the CERD was prepared in conjunction with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and is available by clicking here.

Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor

This is just chilling:

INSIDE the locker of a narcotics cop, Philadelphia police officials recently made a shocking discovery: A cartoon of a man, half as an officer in uniform and half as a Klansman with the words: "Blue By Day - White By Night. White Power," according to police officials.
…

Schweizer, 33, joined the force in June 1997 and makes $54,794 a year, city payroll records show. He became part of the elite Narcotics Strike Force about six years ago. As an undercover, plainclothes cop who worked day and night shifts, Schweizer was part of a surveillance team that watched drug buys and locked up hundreds of suspected drug dealers. He frequently testified in court as a witness for prosecutors. [Philadelphia Daily News]

Racial disparities abound in the war on drugs, but most analysis of the drug war's disparate impact focuses on institutional bias. Rarely are we confronted with such a disturbing window into the racist mindset of an individual officer. Such beliefs render one thoroughly unqualified to carry out law-enforcement duties in any capacity and raise serious questions about this officer's past actions.

More troubling, however, is the possibility that Schweizer is just the tip of the iceberg. Is he a cartoonist? Did he draw the thing himself, or is there a larger organization that produces and markets police-themed racist merchandise to a clientele of closeted white supremacist police officers? I don't know the answer, but this poster sounds like a logo for something very creepy.

Of course, this is just one anecdotal incident, but when such revelations occur within an institution with such a hideously rich tradition of racial bias, it certainly doesn't feel like a coincidence. It is an unflattering portrait of our criminal justice system that adherents to such ideology are able to assimilate within it. Indeed, had he merely possessed the wisdom to keep racist cartoons out if his locker, this officer would still be hard at work filling our prisons with young black and Hispanic drug offenders.

[Courtesy of The Sentencing Project]

I'm pleased to let you know of an article I have recently had published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law that proposes the development of "Racial Impact Statements" as a means of assessing the impact of proposed sentencing policies.  I believe that such a policy would be of great benefit to policymakers and practitioners by establishing a proactive means of addressing a key dynamic in the criminal justice system.

In Racial Impact Statements as a Means of Reducing Unwarranted Sentencing Disparities, I suggest that these statements have much in common with fiscal and environmental impact statements that have become commonplace at many levels of government.  The goal of a racial impact statement would be to assess the projected impact of new sentencing legislation on racial and ethnic minorities prior to enactment of the policy.  If the statement indicates that unwarranted sentencing disparities might be produced, legislators would have the opportunity of considering alternative means of achieving public safety goals that would not exacerbate existing disparities.

I hope that this proposal will be of use to legislators, sentencing commissions, practitioners, and advocacy organizations alike.  Far too often in public policy discussions issues of racial disparity are examined after the fact.  By enacting this policy, we would have the opportunity to engage in a more constructive approach to assessing issues of race and the criminal justice system. 

I hope you find this article helpful in your work and would welcome hearing any reactions you may have.

Regards,

Marc Mauer

Executive Director

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