Cook County blacks hit hard in drug war
Study finds racial bias in sentencing
By Darnell Little |
Tribune staff reporter
- December 4, 2007
African-Americans in Cook County were imprisoned for drug offenses at 58 times the rate of white people -- the seventh-worst racial disparity among large counties nationwide, according to a new report.
The Justice Policy Institute
found that nationwide, African-Americans are imprisoned for drugs at 10 times the rate of white people.
there is little relationship between a county's drug imprisonment rate and the rate of illegal drug use in the county.
Instead, high rates of imprisonment typically indicate counties with larger proportions of African-Americans, higher unemployment and poverty rates, and larger judicial system budgets.
The end result is that though there are nearly 20 million illicit drug users in the U.S., the drug laws are selectively enforced primarily on minorities and the poor
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