Vision Circle

Drug sentencing disparities

We all are familiar with the figures that Prometheus presents. White prison populations are significantly decreasing while black and Latino populations are skyrocketing--Latinos for what appears to be immigration related violations, blacks for drug-related problems.

Now pundits on the left have argued clearly that black and white drug consumption patterns are similar. If anything blacks use drugs less than their white counterparts--and it isn't simply a matter that blacks are poor and don't have the loot to get high. What is going on--and the research here (conducted by John Wallace now at Pittsburgh among others) is that blacks have a number of community oriented checks against drug use, while whites don't have those checks.

BUT.

Blacks aren't put in jail because of drug use--they are put in jail because of drug SALES. I am fairly positive that the same type of gap exists between black and white drug sellers--with whites selling more than their black counterparts. These are the questions I don't have definite answers to:

*What percentage of DEA and local police enforcement resources are spent towards dealing with drugs in urban areas as opposed to suburban or rural areas?

*What percentage of drug sales in urban spaces are public, as opposed to drug sales in rural and suburban areas?

*What percentage of LOW LEVEL drug sales are in urban spaces as opposed to rural and suburban areas?

The reason blacks are put in prison on drug related crimes is not simply "racism." We have to interrogate what that term means in this specific space and time. It is more likely that the same forces which have led to hypersegregation have led to a dynamic in which drug sales in places like Detroit are more likely to be low level, highly visible and easy to prosecute...whereas drug sales in places like Southfield or in Podunk, Iowa are more likely to be either low level and have low levels of visibility, high level and have low levels of visibility or have the active aid of the police department.