Legalized Disparity Pertaining to Drug Charges in the Criminal Justice System of the United States by Joy Powell
When it comes to laws dedicated to establishing the equal rights and balanced treatment for all of its legal citizens, the United States has made great strides over the past few decades. Lackadaisically transforming from a nation built upon and developed through the institution of slavery and other deplorable advances, to a more civilized democracy filled with distinct individuals able to participate in various freedoms, truly make the United States a leading inspiration in the fight for positive change. Though there is an evident abundance of promising constructive developments taking place, there are also new problems advancing and developing as well. Ironically, a majority of the new problems are just manifestations of old problems, and many individuals try to portray these problems as if they are nonexistent in this new highly evolved society. Today, problems such as racism are now seen as a form of communal taboo, where the perpetrators of racist’s acts are punished by society in the form of out casting and public shaming, which neither helps nor hinders the underlying effects. However, these circumstances often only occur when racism is blatantly visible. It is the racism that is retitled and concealed that is the most common, abundant and unsettling. Scholarly research has established that in the United States, the primary unwarranted victims of these obscure acts are African Americans, particularly black men, and one of the many implements used in these tactics to inhibit them are drugs.
One of the main institutions where an individual can witness the heinous acts of adorning the word “racism” with technical talk and legal jargon, while simultaneously formulating laws to incorporate all of the attributes associated with the word, is the American Criminal Justice System. With affirmative support from the government, the criminal justice system is responsible for mandating legislation involving drugs that cause detrimental consequences to the African American community. A majority of black males are targeted, arrested and processed for drug offenses in higher proportions than other groups and understanding why, is the first step in finding a way to stop this injustice.
Justice and History
When it comes to positive innovations that represent the ever changing society that is the United States, the criminal justice system is relatively stagnant; some individuals might even say that the prominent racial issues in the criminal justice system have exacerbated. According to the United States Department of Justice, “Appropriately, public policymakers and administrators in the criminal justice system are responding to the issue of crime and all of its complexity… Our approaches to policing, adjudication, sentencing, imprisonment, and community corrections are changing in significant ways,” (USDJ 7). Even though the criminal justice system represents itself as unbiased and the individuals associated with it assure the American public that their rules are mandated to protect and serve all, the underlining aspects written in fine print that are enforced, confirm to American citizens that the institution is predominantly unjust. According to Marit M. Rehavi, an Assistant Professor and Sonja B. Starr, a Professor of Law, authors of a scholarly article that focuses on racial disparities and sentencing consequences in the criminal justice system, “On average, blacks receive almost 10% longer sentences than comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Also, black men in the United States are incarcerated at a rate of over six times that of white men and over ten times that of black women, and men make up over 80% of federal defendants,” (Starr and Rehavi 2-4). The ways in which the criminal justice system operates, threatens to completely eradicate the progression of our presumed to be advanced society.
In order to identity why African Americans face a higher statistical probability of being arrested, processed and sent to prison more so than Caucasians when it comes to drug offenses, it is important to evaluate the History of America. There have been three critical institutional complications that stunted the social, cultural and economic prosperity of African Americans: Slavery, Jim Crow Laws and the formation of Ghettos. Orlando Patterson, a Jamaican born American who specializes in cultural and historical sociology, was quoted in Loic Wacquant’s “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,” as saying “…slavery is essentially a relation of domination and not a category of legal thought’, and, moreover, a relation unusual for the inordinate amounts of material and symbolic violence it entails,” (Wacquant 99). Slavery in the United States was instituted for the purpose of acquiring economic success. Though the slaves were forced to work, the oppressive treatment formulated to coerce them to do so was redundant and cruel. This inhumane philosophy led to the superiority complex of white slave owners and the inferiority compound of black slaves. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865, the white superiority notion imprinted in white America lingers. To conclude his thoughts on slavery, Patterson states that, “Slavery as a system of unfree labor thus spawned a [suffusive] racial culture which, in turn, remade bondage into something it was not at its outset: a color-coded institution of ethno-racial division,” (Wacquant 100).
Once slaves were free by the “standards” of law, rules and regulations were instilled under the title of Jim Crow. These regionally specific ordinances were used to preserve the heinous techniques used in slavery to stifle advancements of black people, particularly in the South. After decades of suffering through slavery, a large percentage of African Americans migrated from the South to the North in search of job opportunities and equal treatment. With only deplorable living conditions available, those opportunities vanished as many jobs were appointed to Caucasian people also looking for sources of livelihood. The specific substandard areas in which African Americans found themselves, transformed into what is referred to now as ghettos. These specific sections were institutionalized, which meant that there were very few ways of escaping the compounds without the economic means to do so.
The ghettos consisted of poverty-stricken individuals forced to live without resources available to the white population. The result was communities in disarray. Being institutionally restricted from a beneficial education and unable to successfully secure employment resulted in black males having limited opportunities and sources for reliable economic income. This limited educational access and unemployment, further pushed the black community into poverty, leaving black men with fewer normative means to make money for themselves and their families. Crime rates in black ghettos, consisting of individuals fighting for scarce resources, started to rise while black love, self-pride and family values diminished. With few legitimate options, crime, most notably illegal drug sales, seemed to be the only solution for many black men.
Outcomes and Perception
The history of Slavery, Jim Crow Laws and the establishment of ghettos plays a crucial role in the way that African Americans are perceived in the eyes of American society. Many, whom are direct descendants of the people responsible for enslaving black people centuries ago, view the descendants of slaves today as substandard. Such views and corresponding attitudes have a substantial impact on the daily lives of many black men; with the result being forced involvement with the criminal justice system. Evidence of this involves the demographics of incarceration and race. According to Lawrence D. Bobo and Victor Thompson, two authors who wrote an academic article focusing on issues of the criminal justice system being unfair by its design, states that, “In 2004,… black males constituted 43.3 percent of those incarcerated in state, federal, and local prison or jails, though only 13 percent of the total population… whites on the other hand represented 35.7 percent of the male inmate population in 2004, well under there 75 percent of the total male population,” (Bobo and Thompson 450). Taking into account the sheer magnitude of the change in numbers of blacks incarcerated for various reasons, “In 1954, there were only about 98,000 African-American in prison or jail… by 2002 the numbers had risen to 884,500, an increase of 900 percent,” (Bobo and Thompson 451). This vast increase cannot solely be attributed to the changing of the times. The legalized disparities of the criminal justice system commence where all other forms of legal action are authorized, the President of the United States.
The Institutionalization of Racial Injustice
How did these disparities come to be? According to Andrew B. Whitford and Jeff Yates, creators of the book, Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs: President Lyndon Johnson decided that it was time for the nation to crack down on growing illegal drug problems. In 1968 Johnson created the Reorganization Plan which blended with the Bureau of Narcotics and the Bureau of Drug Abuse to formulate the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs within the Department of Justice (Whitford and Yates 40). This was one of many steps in the presidential fight to end the drug epidemic. After Johnson left office, Richard Nixon intensified the federal government’s efforts to fight illegal drugs, particularly in the forms of reefer and dope.
Richard Nixon became the president of the United States in 1969. Once in power, he decided to enforce stricter punishments, prominently in African American communities, resulting in high numbers of arrests in a short period of time, “from 1972 to 1973, the Office of Drug Abuse and Law Enforcement performed around 6,000 drug arrests in 18 months,” (Whitford and Yates 47). Nixon also used his presidential power to focus on high rates of drug affiliated crime in black neighborhoods as a way to frighten his voting public. The following quote was taken from James A Inciardi’s work, “The War on Drugs IV: The Continuing Saga of the Mysteries and Miseries of Intoxication, Addiction, Crime, and Public Policy,” to exemplify viewpoints used to generate negative perceptions of African Americans, “As a case in point we may take the known fact of the prevalence of reefer and dope addiction in Negro areas. This essentially explained in terms of poverty, slum living, and broken families, yet it would be easy to show the lack of drug addiction among other ethnic groups where the same conditions apply,” (Inciardi 248). After Richard Nixon’s presidency came to an end, Ronald Regan was elected and continued on in the disparate campaign to end the War on Drugs.
Ronald Reagan won the presidential elected in 1981 and immediately started increasing the number of rules and regulations targeted towards abolishing the War on Drugs. Reagan succeeded by implementing two actions. The first, mandating laws that penalized drug offenders by forcing them to relinquish their economic claims and real estate (Whitford and Yates 80). The second, permitting the authorization of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act (Whitford and Yates 61). What was the outcome of this act? Over punishment for crack cocaine, a drug predominantly affiliated with African Americans versus powdered cocaine, a drug predominantly affiliated with Caucasians (Whitford and Yates 55). According to Doris Marie Provine, writer of the book, Unequal under Law: Race in the War on Drugs, “The cycle of impoverishment, illicit industry, arrest, punishment, and further marginalization is particularly vicious with respect to illicit drugs like crack cocaine,” (Provine 20). Reagan, similar to Nixon, used the instilled fear of the black community to further intimidate his voting public by bringing to media attention horror stories of crack cocaine (Whitford and Yates 61). Reagan’s public manipulation granted him the right to penalize African American drug offenders more severely than any other nationality (Whitford and Yates 87).
Deborah Small, creator of the work, “The War on Drugs is a War on Racial Justice,” is quoted as saying, “In a country with ‘equal rights for all,’ one out of every three Black men in their twenties is now in prison or jail, or probation, or parole on any given day. Blacks constitute 13 percent of all drug users, but 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those sent to prison,” (Small 2). To conclude her thoughts pertaining to this issue, “Blacks constitute between 75 and 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison (Small 2). Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, both professors in fields of sociology, identified that, “Among white men 18 or over, 1 in 106 are imprisoned, while the comparable figure of Black men is 1 in 15. Among black men between 20 and 34 years of age, fully one in nine are behind bars,” (Hurwits and Peffley 20).
Systematic Inequalities
The War on Drugs aided in the criminalization of the black community. Contrary to popular belief, most black people are law abiding citizens. Law abiding black individuals succeeded in terms of living beyond the institutionalization of the implemented War on Drugs. For those that were not as fortunate, there are many reasons as to why, but three particular circumstances stand out as key; Sentencing, Social Class and Employment. The first circumstance, sentencing, is the process of deciding the punishment for a particular crime. According to W. W. Johnson and Mark Jones, experts in Criminology who wrote an academic article centered around probation, race and the War on Drugs, “Accordingly, the United States legal system was organized so as to presume, protect, and defend the ideal of superiority of whites and the inferiority of blacks,” (Johnson and Jones 1). Though certain elements of this statement are true, can we openly declare racial prejudice and accuse the criminal justice system of discrimination on all cases pertaining to the law? The answer is no. There are circumstances in which the sentencing for a crime committed by an African American is equitable, but a bold claim such as the legal system being systematically programed to discriminate, has to originate from somewhere.
The institution of Slavery, Jim Crow Laws and the establishment of ghettos has led to relatively stagnant social, cultural and economic progression. This sluggish development has influenced how African Americans interact with others living in the same neighborhood. With any community, resources are required to function. When adequate amounts of resources are not supplied, individuals end up having to fight over the scarce resources that have been distributed to them. The need to survive oftentimes overpowers the need to observe the law, which can result in individuals being taken into police custody. The individuals arrested can remain in custody until there release is deemed fit, administering a strain on their families. With family members absent from home, the neighborhood youth partake in various activities to fill the void of family cohesion. This unoccupied presents can lead to seeking refuge in gangs and other forms of group solidarity that emphasis the importance of street life. This emphasis usually commends the buying and selling of drugs and condemns any form of education, turning the neighborhood youth into a counterculture of the dominant society. This drug induced lifestyle customarily ends in jail time or imprisonment, which leaves a prominent infraction on their permanent records.
The second circumstance, social class, according to American ideology, consists of three different levels: the “rich”, the “middle class” and the “poor”. According to the United States Census Bureau of Poverty, “By race, the highest national poverty rates were for American Indians and Alaska Natives (27.0 percent) and Blacks or African Americans (25.8 percent),” (USCBP 2). Continuing on with a statistic specifically pertaining to black people, “When it comes to the black population of the United States as a whole, 9,472,583 out of 36,699,584 individuals live below the poverty level,” (USCBP 13). The United States was built upon the perception of self-gratification, self-pride and self-perseverance. In order to be successful, one must make it happen on their own. This notion can be executed with ease when there are no institutionalized barriers inhibiting the road to social cultural and economic success. It is much more difficult for individuals deliberately hindered by society’s obstructions to move forward. These individuals are oftentimes categorized as being incompetent and indolent, only able to rely on government assistant for financial support. These designated characteristic can manifest into feelings of resentment which can result in further stifling by people who hold positions of power. The lack of financial succor can lead to illegal alternatives to achieving pecuniary gain.
The third and final circumstance, employment, centers on the disparity pertaining to African Americans employed with jobs associated with the criminal justice system. A considerable amount of individuals involved in the process of arresting, booking, sentencing and individuals appointed to aid and rule over people currently in the system are Caucasian. Though the sheer numbers of difference in population can attest to this claim, the presence of an African American judge in the court room makes a difference. Nancy Scherer, creator of, “Blacks on the Bench” is quoted as saying, “it is critical to have black judges on the federal bench because they provide substantive representation of black perspectives in the federal courts… in other words, a black judge will reach a decision based on life experience unique to African Americans, and can articulate these experiences to his or her fellow judges…,” (Scherer 7). It is important to add that, “the placement of black judges on the federal bench is vital because it sends a message to black citizens that they, too, have access to positions of influence,” (Scherer 6). This affirmation not only pertains to federal judges, but lawyers, sheriffs and other occupations that hold a title of power.
Conclusion
The institutionalized criminal justice system is best described by John Flateau, a political economist, quoted in the aforementioned work by Deborah Small, who distinctly states:
“Metaphorically, the criminal justice pipeline is like a slave ship, transporting human cargo along interstate triangular trade routes from Black and Brown communities; through the middle passage of police precincts, holding pens, detention centers and courtrooms; to downstate jails or upstate prison; back to communities as un-rehabilitated escapees; and back to prison or jail in a vicious recidivist cycle” (Small 1).
From Slavery and Jim Crow Laws, to the formation of ghettos, constituting regulations such as the Anti-Drug Abuse Act and establishing legalized movements such as the War on Drugs, the need to control African Americans was and still is intertwined in our current society. The white superiority and black inferior complex has relocated from the plantation to the criminal justice system. These institutions, though deplorable, to some extent were gravely successful. Until these intertwined circumstances are properly addressed and controlled, there will be no evidence of change. These problems will simply become more concealed and further entrenched in our society. There have been copious instances where the arrests and convictions of African Americans have been warranted without prejudice. But to conclude from the staggering numbers of black males somehow negatively intertwined in the criminal justice system, that there placement is duly warranted, reveals a lack of comprehension pertaining to the issue of legalized disparity or blatant ignorance.
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to all of the individuals who reviewed this paper, providing instructive and intuitive critiques that I used to expand my creative level of thinking, elevating my paper to its full potential.
Work’s Cited
Bobo, Lawrence D., and Victor Thompson. Unfair By Design: The War on Drugs Race, and the Legitimacy of the Criminal Justice System. Social Research 73.2 (2006):445-472. Business Source Premier. Web.3 Nov. 2013.
Hurwitz, Jon, and Mark Peffley. “And Justice for Some: Race, Crime, and Punishment in the US Criminal Justice System.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 43.2 (2010): 457-79. ProQuest. 24 Nov 2013.
Inciardi, James A. The War on Drugs IV: The Continuing Saga of the Mysteries and Miseries of Intoxication, Addiction, Crime, and Public Policy. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Pearson/Ally and Bacon, 2008. Print.
Johnson, W. W., and Mark Jones. “Probation, Race, and the War on Drugs: An Empirical Analysis of Drug and Non-Drug Felony Probation Outcomes. Journal of Drug Issues 28.4 (1998): 985-1004. ProQuest. 6. Nov. 2013
Provine, Doris Maria. Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Print.
Rehavi, M. Marit and Starr, Sonja B. “Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and its Sentencing Consequences” Program in Law & Economics Working Paper Series. U of Michigan Law & Econ, Empirical Legal Studies Center. 2-4. (2012):
Scherer, Nancy. “Blacks on the Bench.” Political Science Quarterly 119.4 (2005): 655-75. ProQuest. 24 Nov 2013.
Small, Deborah. “The War on Drugs is a War on Racial Justice.” Social Research 68.3 (2001): 896-903. ProQuest. 20 Nov. 2013.
United States. Census Bureau. “Poverty Rates for Selected Detailed Race and Hispanic Groups by State and Place: 2007-2011.” Census.gov. United States Census 2013. Washington: US Census Bureau, Feb 2013. Web 24 Nov. 2013.
United States. Dept. of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institution of Justice. NIJ.gov. National Criminal Justice Reference Service Critical Criminal Justice Issues. Washington, D.C. Web.
Wacquant, Loic. “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh.” Punishment and Society 3.1 (2001): 95-134. ProQuest. 20 Nov. 2013.
Whitord, Andrew B., and Jeff Yates. Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Construction the War on Drugs. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009. Print.
One of the main institutions where an individual can witness the heinous acts of adorning the word “racism” with technical talk and legal jargon, while simultaneously formulating laws to incorporate all of the attributes associated with the word, is the American Criminal Justice System. With affirmative support from the government, the criminal justice system is responsible for mandating legislation involving drugs that cause detrimental consequences to the African American community. A majority of black males are targeted, arrested and processed for drug offenses in higher proportions than other groups and understanding why, is the first step in finding a way to stop this injustice.
Justice and History
When it comes to positive innovations that represent the ever changing society that is the United States, the criminal justice system is relatively stagnant; some individuals might even say that the prominent racial issues in the criminal justice system have exacerbated. According to the United States Department of Justice, “Appropriately, public policymakers and administrators in the criminal justice system are responding to the issue of crime and all of its complexity… Our approaches to policing, adjudication, sentencing, imprisonment, and community corrections are changing in significant ways,” (USDJ 7). Even though the criminal justice system represents itself as unbiased and the individuals associated with it assure the American public that their rules are mandated to protect and serve all, the underlining aspects written in fine print that are enforced, confirm to American citizens that the institution is predominantly unjust. According to Marit M. Rehavi, an Assistant Professor and Sonja B. Starr, a Professor of Law, authors of a scholarly article that focuses on racial disparities and sentencing consequences in the criminal justice system, “On average, blacks receive almost 10% longer sentences than comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Also, black men in the United States are incarcerated at a rate of over six times that of white men and over ten times that of black women, and men make up over 80% of federal defendants,” (Starr and Rehavi 2-4). The ways in which the criminal justice system operates, threatens to completely eradicate the progression of our presumed to be advanced society.
In order to identity why African Americans face a higher statistical probability of being arrested, processed and sent to prison more so than Caucasians when it comes to drug offenses, it is important to evaluate the History of America. There have been three critical institutional complications that stunted the social, cultural and economic prosperity of African Americans: Slavery, Jim Crow Laws and the formation of Ghettos. Orlando Patterson, a Jamaican born American who specializes in cultural and historical sociology, was quoted in Loic Wacquant’s “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,” as saying “…slavery is essentially a relation of domination and not a category of legal thought’, and, moreover, a relation unusual for the inordinate amounts of material and symbolic violence it entails,” (Wacquant 99). Slavery in the United States was instituted for the purpose of acquiring economic success. Though the slaves were forced to work, the oppressive treatment formulated to coerce them to do so was redundant and cruel. This inhumane philosophy led to the superiority complex of white slave owners and the inferiority compound of black slaves. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865, the white superiority notion imprinted in white America lingers. To conclude his thoughts on slavery, Patterson states that, “Slavery as a system of unfree labor thus spawned a [suffusive] racial culture which, in turn, remade bondage into something it was not at its outset: a color-coded institution of ethno-racial division,” (Wacquant 100).
Once slaves were free by the “standards” of law, rules and regulations were instilled under the title of Jim Crow. These regionally specific ordinances were used to preserve the heinous techniques used in slavery to stifle advancements of black people, particularly in the South. After decades of suffering through slavery, a large percentage of African Americans migrated from the South to the North in search of job opportunities and equal treatment. With only deplorable living conditions available, those opportunities vanished as many jobs were appointed to Caucasian people also looking for sources of livelihood. The specific substandard areas in which African Americans found themselves, transformed into what is referred to now as ghettos. These specific sections were institutionalized, which meant that there were very few ways of escaping the compounds without the economic means to do so.
The ghettos consisted of poverty-stricken individuals forced to live without resources available to the white population. The result was communities in disarray. Being institutionally restricted from a beneficial education and unable to successfully secure employment resulted in black males having limited opportunities and sources for reliable economic income. This limited educational access and unemployment, further pushed the black community into poverty, leaving black men with fewer normative means to make money for themselves and their families. Crime rates in black ghettos, consisting of individuals fighting for scarce resources, started to rise while black love, self-pride and family values diminished. With few legitimate options, crime, most notably illegal drug sales, seemed to be the only solution for many black men.
Outcomes and Perception
The history of Slavery, Jim Crow Laws and the establishment of ghettos plays a crucial role in the way that African Americans are perceived in the eyes of American society. Many, whom are direct descendants of the people responsible for enslaving black people centuries ago, view the descendants of slaves today as substandard. Such views and corresponding attitudes have a substantial impact on the daily lives of many black men; with the result being forced involvement with the criminal justice system. Evidence of this involves the demographics of incarceration and race. According to Lawrence D. Bobo and Victor Thompson, two authors who wrote an academic article focusing on issues of the criminal justice system being unfair by its design, states that, “In 2004,… black males constituted 43.3 percent of those incarcerated in state, federal, and local prison or jails, though only 13 percent of the total population… whites on the other hand represented 35.7 percent of the male inmate population in 2004, well under there 75 percent of the total male population,” (Bobo and Thompson 450). Taking into account the sheer magnitude of the change in numbers of blacks incarcerated for various reasons, “In 1954, there were only about 98,000 African-American in prison or jail… by 2002 the numbers had risen to 884,500, an increase of 900 percent,” (Bobo and Thompson 451). This vast increase cannot solely be attributed to the changing of the times. The legalized disparities of the criminal justice system commence where all other forms of legal action are authorized, the President of the United States.
The Institutionalization of Racial Injustice
How did these disparities come to be? According to Andrew B. Whitford and Jeff Yates, creators of the book, Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs: President Lyndon Johnson decided that it was time for the nation to crack down on growing illegal drug problems. In 1968 Johnson created the Reorganization Plan which blended with the Bureau of Narcotics and the Bureau of Drug Abuse to formulate the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs within the Department of Justice (Whitford and Yates 40). This was one of many steps in the presidential fight to end the drug epidemic. After Johnson left office, Richard Nixon intensified the federal government’s efforts to fight illegal drugs, particularly in the forms of reefer and dope.
Richard Nixon became the president of the United States in 1969. Once in power, he decided to enforce stricter punishments, prominently in African American communities, resulting in high numbers of arrests in a short period of time, “from 1972 to 1973, the Office of Drug Abuse and Law Enforcement performed around 6,000 drug arrests in 18 months,” (Whitford and Yates 47). Nixon also used his presidential power to focus on high rates of drug affiliated crime in black neighborhoods as a way to frighten his voting public. The following quote was taken from James A Inciardi’s work, “The War on Drugs IV: The Continuing Saga of the Mysteries and Miseries of Intoxication, Addiction, Crime, and Public Policy,” to exemplify viewpoints used to generate negative perceptions of African Americans, “As a case in point we may take the known fact of the prevalence of reefer and dope addiction in Negro areas. This essentially explained in terms of poverty, slum living, and broken families, yet it would be easy to show the lack of drug addiction among other ethnic groups where the same conditions apply,” (Inciardi 248). After Richard Nixon’s presidency came to an end, Ronald Regan was elected and continued on in the disparate campaign to end the War on Drugs.
Ronald Reagan won the presidential elected in 1981 and immediately started increasing the number of rules and regulations targeted towards abolishing the War on Drugs. Reagan succeeded by implementing two actions. The first, mandating laws that penalized drug offenders by forcing them to relinquish their economic claims and real estate (Whitford and Yates 80). The second, permitting the authorization of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act (Whitford and Yates 61). What was the outcome of this act? Over punishment for crack cocaine, a drug predominantly affiliated with African Americans versus powdered cocaine, a drug predominantly affiliated with Caucasians (Whitford and Yates 55). According to Doris Marie Provine, writer of the book, Unequal under Law: Race in the War on Drugs, “The cycle of impoverishment, illicit industry, arrest, punishment, and further marginalization is particularly vicious with respect to illicit drugs like crack cocaine,” (Provine 20). Reagan, similar to Nixon, used the instilled fear of the black community to further intimidate his voting public by bringing to media attention horror stories of crack cocaine (Whitford and Yates 61). Reagan’s public manipulation granted him the right to penalize African American drug offenders more severely than any other nationality (Whitford and Yates 87).
Deborah Small, creator of the work, “The War on Drugs is a War on Racial Justice,” is quoted as saying, “In a country with ‘equal rights for all,’ one out of every three Black men in their twenties is now in prison or jail, or probation, or parole on any given day. Blacks constitute 13 percent of all drug users, but 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those sent to prison,” (Small 2). To conclude her thoughts pertaining to this issue, “Blacks constitute between 75 and 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison (Small 2). Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, both professors in fields of sociology, identified that, “Among white men 18 or over, 1 in 106 are imprisoned, while the comparable figure of Black men is 1 in 15. Among black men between 20 and 34 years of age, fully one in nine are behind bars,” (Hurwits and Peffley 20).
Systematic Inequalities
The War on Drugs aided in the criminalization of the black community. Contrary to popular belief, most black people are law abiding citizens. Law abiding black individuals succeeded in terms of living beyond the institutionalization of the implemented War on Drugs. For those that were not as fortunate, there are many reasons as to why, but three particular circumstances stand out as key; Sentencing, Social Class and Employment. The first circumstance, sentencing, is the process of deciding the punishment for a particular crime. According to W. W. Johnson and Mark Jones, experts in Criminology who wrote an academic article centered around probation, race and the War on Drugs, “Accordingly, the United States legal system was organized so as to presume, protect, and defend the ideal of superiority of whites and the inferiority of blacks,” (Johnson and Jones 1). Though certain elements of this statement are true, can we openly declare racial prejudice and accuse the criminal justice system of discrimination on all cases pertaining to the law? The answer is no. There are circumstances in which the sentencing for a crime committed by an African American is equitable, but a bold claim such as the legal system being systematically programed to discriminate, has to originate from somewhere.
The institution of Slavery, Jim Crow Laws and the establishment of ghettos has led to relatively stagnant social, cultural and economic progression. This sluggish development has influenced how African Americans interact with others living in the same neighborhood. With any community, resources are required to function. When adequate amounts of resources are not supplied, individuals end up having to fight over the scarce resources that have been distributed to them. The need to survive oftentimes overpowers the need to observe the law, which can result in individuals being taken into police custody. The individuals arrested can remain in custody until there release is deemed fit, administering a strain on their families. With family members absent from home, the neighborhood youth partake in various activities to fill the void of family cohesion. This unoccupied presents can lead to seeking refuge in gangs and other forms of group solidarity that emphasis the importance of street life. This emphasis usually commends the buying and selling of drugs and condemns any form of education, turning the neighborhood youth into a counterculture of the dominant society. This drug induced lifestyle customarily ends in jail time or imprisonment, which leaves a prominent infraction on their permanent records.
The second circumstance, social class, according to American ideology, consists of three different levels: the “rich”, the “middle class” and the “poor”. According to the United States Census Bureau of Poverty, “By race, the highest national poverty rates were for American Indians and Alaska Natives (27.0 percent) and Blacks or African Americans (25.8 percent),” (USCBP 2). Continuing on with a statistic specifically pertaining to black people, “When it comes to the black population of the United States as a whole, 9,472,583 out of 36,699,584 individuals live below the poverty level,” (USCBP 13). The United States was built upon the perception of self-gratification, self-pride and self-perseverance. In order to be successful, one must make it happen on their own. This notion can be executed with ease when there are no institutionalized barriers inhibiting the road to social cultural and economic success. It is much more difficult for individuals deliberately hindered by society’s obstructions to move forward. These individuals are oftentimes categorized as being incompetent and indolent, only able to rely on government assistant for financial support. These designated characteristic can manifest into feelings of resentment which can result in further stifling by people who hold positions of power. The lack of financial succor can lead to illegal alternatives to achieving pecuniary gain.
The third and final circumstance, employment, centers on the disparity pertaining to African Americans employed with jobs associated with the criminal justice system. A considerable amount of individuals involved in the process of arresting, booking, sentencing and individuals appointed to aid and rule over people currently in the system are Caucasian. Though the sheer numbers of difference in population can attest to this claim, the presence of an African American judge in the court room makes a difference. Nancy Scherer, creator of, “Blacks on the Bench” is quoted as saying, “it is critical to have black judges on the federal bench because they provide substantive representation of black perspectives in the federal courts… in other words, a black judge will reach a decision based on life experience unique to African Americans, and can articulate these experiences to his or her fellow judges…,” (Scherer 7). It is important to add that, “the placement of black judges on the federal bench is vital because it sends a message to black citizens that they, too, have access to positions of influence,” (Scherer 6). This affirmation not only pertains to federal judges, but lawyers, sheriffs and other occupations that hold a title of power.
Conclusion
The institutionalized criminal justice system is best described by John Flateau, a political economist, quoted in the aforementioned work by Deborah Small, who distinctly states:
“Metaphorically, the criminal justice pipeline is like a slave ship, transporting human cargo along interstate triangular trade routes from Black and Brown communities; through the middle passage of police precincts, holding pens, detention centers and courtrooms; to downstate jails or upstate prison; back to communities as un-rehabilitated escapees; and back to prison or jail in a vicious recidivist cycle” (Small 1).
From Slavery and Jim Crow Laws, to the formation of ghettos, constituting regulations such as the Anti-Drug Abuse Act and establishing legalized movements such as the War on Drugs, the need to control African Americans was and still is intertwined in our current society. The white superiority and black inferior complex has relocated from the plantation to the criminal justice system. These institutions, though deplorable, to some extent were gravely successful. Until these intertwined circumstances are properly addressed and controlled, there will be no evidence of change. These problems will simply become more concealed and further entrenched in our society. There have been copious instances where the arrests and convictions of African Americans have been warranted without prejudice. But to conclude from the staggering numbers of black males somehow negatively intertwined in the criminal justice system, that there placement is duly warranted, reveals a lack of comprehension pertaining to the issue of legalized disparity or blatant ignorance.
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to all of the individuals who reviewed this paper, providing instructive and intuitive critiques that I used to expand my creative level of thinking, elevating my paper to its full potential.
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