Decline In Blacks In State Prisons For Drugs
The number of African-American drug offenders in state prisons has declined for the first time since law enforcement agencies started the war on drugs 25 years ago, even as convictions of white drug offenders have increased, according to a new study released Tuesday.
The study, by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit policy research group in Washington, found that the number of blacks in state prisons for drug crimes dropped 21.6 percent from 1999 to 2005, the last year for which data are available. The number of white drug offenders in state prisons grew by 42.6 percent in the same period. The total number of drug offenders in state prisons increased to 253,300 in 2005 from 251,200 in 1999, according to the report.
Experts in criminal justice suggested several reasons for the decline in imprisoned black drug offenders, including a reduction in racial profiling, a drop in open-air drug sales and a cooling of the crack cocaine trade that devastated urban communities throughout the 1980s and ’90s.
The study, which was based on an analysis of data from the F.B.I. and other federal agencies, noted a sharp contrast between state and federal prisons, where there was an overall expansion of inmates — black, white and Latino — serving time for drug-related offenses. Blacks continued to make up the largest segment — 44 percent — of all prisoners serving time for drug offenses, although they were only 12 percent of the total population, while whites, who were 75 percent of the national population, made up 27 percent of all imprisoned drug offenders. The incarceration rate for Latino drug offenders in state prisons was substantially unchanged, 20.2 percent in 2005, down from 20.7 percent in 1999.
There is a lot more data available from the article in the New York Times.
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