Racial Disparity

News Article

Connecticut drug-free zone laws blanket minority neighborhoods but fail to deter drug activity

Connecticut ranks at the top in the nation in the degree of disparity between the rates of incarceration for whites and blacks. The state’s drug-free zone laws contribute to that disparity by blanketing densely populated urban neighborhoods with prohibited zones. Yet new research shows that the laws do nothing to protect in youth from drug activity

Connecticut ranks at the top in the nation in the degree of disparity between the rates of incarceration for whites and blacks. Many who advocate for racial justice believe that the state’s mandatory minimum drug laws – including statutes that enhance penalties for offenses that take place in prohibited zones – play a major role in fostering that racial disparity.

Connecticut's drug-free zone laws affect manufacture, sale, and possession of a drug or drug paraphernalia within 1,500 feet of a school, day care center, or public housing unit. The mandatory penalties were designed to operate as sentencing enhancements, and are imposed on top of whatever sentence a person receives for the underlying drug offense. Read more »

News Article

Massachusetts drug-free zone law ineffective, not evenly enforced

In Massachusetts, where 80 percent of those sentenced with the drug-free enhancement are ethnic and racial minorities, two different research efforts have determined that the laws are not working as intended. Researchers affiliated with the Boston University School of Public Health found that decisions by police and prosecutors to invoke the statute had little or nothing to do with keeping drugs away from schoolchildren. A research team at Northeastern University School of Law found disturbing patterns of racial disparity in arrests and charging practices.

The Massachusetts "school-zone" statute, enacted in 1989, establishes 1,000-foot penalty enhancement zones around schools and 100-foot zones around parks and playgrounds. Defendants convicted of distributing or possessing drugs with intent to distribute in a drug-free zone face a two-year mandatory minimum term that must be served on top of any penalty imposed for the underlying offense. The enhancement does not apply to simple drug possession charges. Read more »

News Article The Associated Press March 23, 2006

Drug-Free School Zone Laws Questioned

In reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, laws creating drug-free zones around schools spread nationwide. Now, hard questions are being raised — by legislators, activists, even law enforcement officials — about the fairness and effectiveness of those laws.

In New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington state, bills have been proposed to sharply reduce the size of the zones. A former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts reviewed hundreds of drug-free-zone cases, and found that less than 1 percent involved drug sales to youths.

Read more »
JS Publication October 31, 2005

Alabama Prison Crisis

Justice Strategies researchers find that nonviolent drug offenses drive explosive prison population growth

Alabama's prisons are dangerously overcrowded and disastrously under-funded. Facilities designed for 13,500 prisoners hold more than 27,000, and Alabama's largest prisons are crammed to three times their design capacity. State corrections officials struggle daily to manage a system characterized by the nation's lowest per-prisoner expenditures and highest ratio of prisoners to guards, along with a death rate that far exceeds the norm.

Alabama's prison crisis is a consequence of explosive prison population growth. While the state's resident population grew by less than 20 percent during the past quarter-century, the prison population more than quadrupled, surpassing 27,000 prisoners in July 2005. Alabama's incarceration rate, which barely exceeded the national average in 1980, now ranks among the top five. African-Americans — who make up just a quarter of Alabama residents but 60 percent of state prisoners — have been hit hard by prison population growth, as have women whose share of the population has increased rapidly.

Read more »

JS Publication May 11, 2004

Arizona Prison Crisis: A Call for Smart On Crime Solutions

Mandatory sentencing laws fuel overcrowding, fill prisons with substance abusers

With the ninth highest rate of incarceration in the nation, Arizona has become the incarceration capital of the western United States. The rate of prison population growth in 2002 was twice the regional average and the state incarcerates women, Latinos and African Americans at higher rates than its neighbors.

Arizona's high incarceration rate is driven by a rigid mandatory sentencing system that severely restricts judges' discretion in imposing sentences and crowds prisons with non-violent substance abusers. Mandatory and lengthy "enhanced" prison terms are required for a variety of offenses, regardless of the facts in the case or the seriousness of the underlying conduct. Except in cases involving first-time defendants charged with low-level property or drug offenses, the system places all sentencing discretion in the hands of prosecutors. Read more »

Syndicate content