Feds Criminalize A Generation

The prison incarceration juggernaut slowed down slightly in state prisons in 1999. But the federal government more than picked up the slack. According to a Bureau of Justice report the number of those jailed in federal prisons grew by 11,000 in 1999. The majority of them were for drug offenses. And to almost no one's surprise most of these drug offenders were young African-Americans.

Putting thousands of black men behind bars for mostly non-violent drug offenses has had staggering consequences. It has wreaked massive social and political havoc on families and communities. It has been the single biggest reason for the bloat in federal spending on prison construction, maintenance, and the escalation in the number of prosecutors needed to handle the continuing flood of drug cases.

The standard reasons given for criminalizing practically an entire generation of young blacks is that they are poor, crime-prone, and lack family values. The more compelling reason can still be summed up in four words: racially-biased drug laws. Reports and studies by the Justice Department, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, as well as universities and foundations confirm that:

• Far more whites use and deal drugs including crack cocaine than blacks.

• The overwhelming majority of those prosecuted in federal courts for drug possession and sale (mostly small amounts of crack cocaine) and given stiff mandatory sentences of ten years to life are African-American.

• Only five percent of those sentenced to jail terms are major dealers.

• There is a massive and deep disparity in how blacks (crack cocaine) and whites (powdered cocaine) are being sentenced by the federal and state courts.

Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno have given their tepid support to eliminate the gaping racial disparities in the drug laws. Yet the reconstituted Sentencing Commission recently moved swiftly to amend, revise, and upgrade sentences for a range of offenses but said nothing about amending the drug sentencing laws. The scapegoating of blacks for America's crime and drug problem actually began in the 1980s.

The assault by Republican conservatives on job, income, and social service programs, a crumbling educational system and industrial shrinkage dumped more blacks on the streets with no where to go. Some chose guns, gangs, crime and drugs. The big cuts in welfare, social services, and skills training programs under the Clinton administration have dumped not only more young black males but more black women on the streets. According to the Bureau of Justice report the number of women in U.S. prisons has doubled since 1990 to a record 100,000.

Much of the media quickly turned the drug problem into a black problem and played it up big in news stories and features. Many Americans scared stiff of the drug crisis readily gave their blessing to drug sweeps, random vehicle checks, marginally legal searches and seizures, evictions from housing projects and apartments. When it came to law enforcement practices in the ghettos and barrios, the denial of civil liberties protections, due process and privacy made a mockery of the criminal justice system to many blacks and Latinos.

Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey who has mightily defended the administration's policy in the past shifted gears in recent interviews and now brands the disastrous drug policy a case of "bad drug policy and bad law enforcement." The way to right the ship and change bad drug policy into good policy and good law enforcement is not to build more prisons, pass even tougher laws, or as some suggest equalize sentences for crack and powdered cocaine.

This would only nail more small time white users and dealers. The answer is to shift billions from prisons to programs for drug education, treatment and prevention, do away with the mandatory drug sentencing laws, restore sentencing discretion to judges, target high level dealers for prosecution, and end drug profiling and random stops of black and Latino motorists.

McCaffrey and other federal officials are at least finally paying some lip-service to the pathetic truth that billions are being squandered on a wasteful, racially-flawed drug policy that targets mostly, poor, and desperate small time black drug offenders. They have done nothing to change that policy. Until they do more and more young black men and women will continue to stuff federal prison cells.

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