The War on Drugs OR ''the war on blacks'' (602 hits)
The War on Drugs The series of drug policies that collectively became known as the War on Drugs has had a profound impact on both the number and composition of people who are incarcerated for a drug offense. As we have noted, people of color are imprisoned for drug offenses at rates that greatly exceed their proportion of the drug-using population. This is due in part to law enforcement practices, but is also related to drug sentencing policies that have been enacted since the 1980s at both the federal and state level. Every state now has some form of mandatory sentencing, often applying to drug offenses. At the federal level, the mandatory five- and ten-year sentencing policies adopted for crack cocaine offenses in the 1980s have been the subject of much analysis and criticism for the racial disparities they produce relative to powder cocaine offenses. While the federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses were amended by the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 2007, the legislatively enacted mandatory penalties are still in 8 place. Many analysts have contended that the racial disparities resulting from these laws could have been predicted in advance had lawmakers engaged in a rational assessment of likely outcomes.
