Racial Shift In Drug-Crime Prisoners: More Whites And Fewer Blacks

Washington Post:

For the first time since crack cocaine sparked a war on drugs 20 years ago, the number of black Americans in state prisons for drug offenses has fallen sharply, while the number of white prisoners convicted for drug crimes has increased, according to a report released yesterday.

The D.C.-based Sentencing Project reported that the number of black inmates in state prisons for drug offenses had fallen from 145,000 in 1999 to 113,500 in 2005, a 22 percent decline. In that period, the number of white drug offenders rose steadily, from about 50,000 to more than 72,000, a 43 percent increase. The number of Latino drug offenders was virtually unchanged at about 51,000.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[timewaster2dcore]

Laws are made to suit the majority group--it's as simple as that.

[kottison]

Great Mos Def song Robx and your avatar is on point!

[robXdion]

Thanks!! LOL! People always called me Huey Freeman, so I had to do it. Now they have them embedded in messages.

[kottison]

Aint this something! I wonder if they'll change the drug laws since more white people are getting locked up?

[Thaencyder]

makes me want to post lyrics from my favorite rap song by an artists named Mos Def.

nearly half of America's largest cities is one-quarter black
That's why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack
Sixteen ounces to a pound, twenty more to a ki
A five minute sentence hearing and you no longer free
Yo, it's one universal law but two sides to every story
Three strikes and you be in for life, mandatory
When the average minimum wage is $5.15
You best believe you gotta find a new ground to get cream
The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black
so frontliners got they gun in your back
Bubblin crack, jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty
and end up in the global jail economy
Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence
Budget cutbacks but increased police presence
And even if you get out of prison still livin
join the other five million under state supervision
This is business, no faces just lines and statistics
from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits
The system break man child and women into figures
Two columns for who is, and who ain't niggaz
Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings
but you push too hard, even numbers got limits
Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret:
the million other straws underneath it - it's all mathematics

[robXdion]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVZQdgVcqD8

[Thaencyder]

as a black man I don't know if I should be happy to hear such a news or not. I'm kind of happy that the number of black inmates have sharply fallen down but at the same time saddened that more whites are going to jail. regardless of race, it's sad to see people go to jail but this will surely change the drug laws, soon. all of the sudden treating inmates like animals and locking them up for anything will be the thing of the past.

[robXdion]

Do you understand the inherent correlating logic of your last sentence? The empirical obviousness that everyone tries to deny? Blacks are seen as animals and are locked up for anything. But you won't see William Bennett pouring out a lil liquor for them on CNN. Nope. And drug laws shouldn't change suddenly because of WHO's getting popped now. That would make hypocrites out of everyone yapping about the integrity of the system and how sound it is. ---- But actually it would be TRULY profound to see blacks show 10% of the compassion for each other that they seem to reflexively have for whites.

[Thaencyder]

I don't get your point. to me regardless of race I hate to see anyone go to jail. with that being said, if more whites are being incarcerated for petty crimes drug laws will change. that's a fact.

[OneTop]

These kind of statistics, if proven to be true, are bound to change the drug laws.

[tommy8]

Reverse racism!

[robXdion]

What happened to all that crowing about, "do the crime, do the time" and self-respo­nsibility? Maybe they're actually guilty like the expendable blacks so many love to castigate?

[tommy8]

They probably are guilty. It was a joke.

[cityspeak]

It isn't race that is the issue but an issue of class. Yes I know it is a taboo subject in America to speak of class but the people being put away are the poorest people in the chain.

The war on drugs is a war on the poor and a windfall for the well connected and wealthy.

[loki]

I would think that the increase in methlabs in southern states, and pot being grown in national forest , which appears to be more a white problem than anything, very well could contribute to the increase of whites in prisons.

[poiuyty]

Here is an even better idea, stop putting both whites and blacks, and any other race for that matter, in jail for drugs.

That would be some real change!!

[rebeljrs]

Read the article next time before you comment. You won't sound so ill informed. The article refers to and increase in the percentage of white's being incarcerated for drug offenses and a decrease in the percentage of African-Americans. It translates to fewer African-Americans serving in state prisons in 2005 than were in 1998 as opposed to the opposite for whites. Race plays no part in the decrease in one or the increase in another. Find some other issue to blame for the increase in white's being incarcerated like the one the article has so conveniently offered at the end.

[PCMinistry]

Yeah I saw that and I was looking at that graph and I'm pretty sure they are still lying. The reason is because they say that the amount of blacks incarcerated went down, while the amount of whites went up. But it is still showing that the total for blacks is still higher than the total for whites. This can't be right because blacks make up such a smaller amount of the whole population than do whites. How could that possibly be right?

[suec03]

Please! Fingernails on blackboard moment! The summary correctly referred to the "number" of persons. Please don't say the "amount" of black or white persons. "Amount" is reserved for things that can me measured by the cup or quart or gallon or ton. Humans are countable! Always use "number" with humans, not "amount." Thank you.

[ccoop]

That's because they've run out of black people to incarcerate.

The misery and mistreatment which has been dumped on the minorities of this country by the powers that be have finally reached those living in gated suburban communities.

The prison industrial complex must have warm bodies to fuel its growth - and it doesn't care what color they are.

Bottom line? There are more whites than blacks in this country, hence a larger pool of "assets."

It's just business.