By Ronald W. Weathersby
By the time of their 18th birthday, nearly one-third of African-Americans, 26 percent of Hispanics and 22 percent of whites have been arrested. And by the age of 23 nearly 50 percent of black men are arrested at least once on non-traffic related crimes.
One of the authors of the study published in the journal “Crime & Delinquency” said the statistics could be useful in shaping policy so that people aren’t haunted by arrests when they apply for jobs, schools or public housing.
“Many, many people are involved with the criminal justice system at this level,” said Shawn Bushway, a University at Albany criminologist in USA Today. “And treating them all as if they’re hardened criminals is a serious mistake.”
The statistics were based on annual federal Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of about 7,000 young people who answered questions each year from 1997 to 2008 on a range of issues.
Among women, 20 percent of blacks, 18 percent of whites and 16 percent of Hispanics were arrested at least once by age 23.
By contrast in 1967 similar estimate found that by age 23, 34 percent of all men would have been arrested at least once.
Rev. Edwin Sanders, pastor of Metropolitan Interdenominational Church in Nashville, says the high arrest and incarceration rates among black men are a result of the so-called war on drugs. Sanders said, the laws on drug use aren’t enforced fairly. A report from the ACLU of Tennessee last year showed that black Tennesseans are arrested on marijuana possession charges four times as often as whites. About 45 percent of those arrested for marijuana-related crimes are black, even though blacks make up about 17 percent of the state’s population.
Rev. Edwin C. Sanders, II
“Whites Smoke Pot, but Blacks Are Arrested.” That was the headline of a column by New York Times reporter for The Jim Dwyer in 2009. Although Dwyer was writing about New York City, he summed up two facts about marijuana use and arrests across the country: whites and blacks use marijuana equally, but the police do not arrest them equally. A third important fact: the vast majority (76 percent) of those arrested and charged with the crime of marijuana possession are young people in their teens and 20s.
Over the last fifteen years, police departments in the United States made 10 million arrests for marijuana possession—an average of almost 700,000 arrests a year. Police arrest blacks for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites in every state and nearly every city and county—as shown in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports and state databases.
Big city police departments are among the worst offenders. Police in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York have arrested blacks for marijuana possession at more than seven times the rate of whites. Other large urban areas that make huge numbers of racially biased arrests include Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, Las Vegas, Memphis, Miami, Nashville, St. Louis and Washington, DC.
The ACLU released a study, The War on Marijuana in Black and White, in which it found that police arrest blacks for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites in poor, middle-class and wealthy communities. The glaring racial disparities in marijuana arrests exist regardless of whether blacks make up 50 percent or 5 percent of a county’s overall population.
These arrest rates continue in spite of the fact that young whites (age 18 to 25) use marijuana more than young blacks and government studies comparing marijuana use among whites and blacks of all ages have found that both groups use it at a similar rate.
Marijuana arrests are racially skewed as a result of institutional racism created and administered by people at the highest levels of law enforcement and government. In fact, most people arrested for marijuana possession were not smoking it: they typically had a small amount hidden in their clothing, vehicle or personal effects. The police found the marijuana by stopping and searching them (often illegally), or by tricking them into revealing it. Police departments including Nashville, concentrate their patrols in certain designated “high crime neighborhoods” that are usually where low-income whites and people of color live. In these neighborhoods, police stop and search the most vehicles and individuals while looking for “contraband” of any type to make an arrest. The most common item that people in any neighborhood possess that will get them arrested—and the most common item that police find—is a small amount of marijuana.
Police officers patrolling in middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods typically do not search the vehicles and pockets of white people, so most well-off whites enjoy a de facto legalization of marijuana possession.
The result has been called “racism without racists.” No individual officers need harbor racial animosity for our criminal justice system to produce jails and courts filled with black faces. But the apparent absence of hostile intent does not absolve policy-makers and law enforcement officials from responsibility or blame.
High arrests rates for young black men create a troubling cycle for individuals, their families and the community. Criminal records lead to difficulties gaining lawful employment, admission to schools and training programs and in some cases public assistance which often results in criminal behavior and more arrests.
These arrests which in many cases follow young African-Americans for life are profitable to individual police and their departments. In many departments, officers can earn overtime pay by stopping and searching young people near the end of a shift and making a marijuana arrest. The term “collars for dollars” refers to the practice of making misdemeanor arrests to earn overtime pay. Additionally, police department supervisors find that marijuana possession arrests are proof of productivity to their superiors.
More ominously however is the fact that marijuana arrests enable police departments to obtain fingerprints, photographs and other data on young people who would not otherwise end up in their databases. There is nothing else the police can do that gets so many new people into their system as the broad net of marijuana possession arrests.