Title: When It Comes To Illegal Drug Use, White America Does The Crime, Black America Gets The Time | HuffPost
Headings: When It Comes To Illegal Drug Use, White America Does The Crime, Black America Gets The Time
When It Comes To Illegal Drug Use, White America Does The Crime, Black America Gets The Time
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Content: Higher percentages of whites have also tried hallucinogens, marijuana, pain relievers like OxyContin, and stimulants like methamphetamine, according to the survey. Crack is more popular among blacks than whites, but not by much. Download
Still, blacks are arrested for drug possession more than three times as often as whites, according to a 2009 report from the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. Of the 225,242 people who were serving time in state prisons for drug offenses in 2011, blacks made up 45 percent and whites comprised just 30 percent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Jamie Fellner, author of the Human Rights Watch report, offered an explanation for this discrepancy. “The race issue isn’t just that the judge is going, ‘Oh, black man, I’m gonna sentence you higher,’” she said. “ The police go into low-income minority neighborhoods and that’s where they make most of their drug arrests. If they arrest you, now you have a ‘prior,’ so if you plead or get arrested again, you’re gonna have a higher sentence. There’s a kind of cumulative effect.” Lawmakers in California hope to blunt that effect.