Unintended Effect of War on Drugs Found in Study

More than half of convicted drug offenders at state prisons have no history of violent crime or serious drug offenses, and a disproportionate number of them come from poor, minority communities, a study to be released today has found.

The study by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group that promotes alternatives to prison, offers a detailed look at state-incarcerated drug offenders, who made up almost a quarter of all inmates. It is based on information collected in 1997, when the last federal survey of state drug prisoners was conducted. An estimated $5 billion is spent each year to keep drug offenders locked up.

The findings suggest that what critics call harsh sentencing laws and shortsighted law enforcement policies to combat illicit drug use have had the unintended consequence of imprisoning mostly nonviolent drug offenders, many of them black and Latino.

The record-setting incarceration policies over two decades of the country’s war on drugs have been misguided, ineffective and costly, said Marc Mauer, coauthor of the study and assistant director of the Sentencing Project.

“If you listen to the tone of discussions, there is more receptivity to relying less on harsh sentences and more on constructive intervention,” Mauer said. “The question is, will [government officials] begin to extend use of treatment diversion options for offenders currently being sent to prison who don’t need to be there?”

A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration declined to comment about the group’s findings but defended the government’s policies, saying that many drug offenders do not seek treatment until after they are arrested.

According to the study, 58% of the 216,254 drug offenders held in state prisons in 1997 had never been charged with a violent crime or a “high-level” drug offense. Most of those convicted were street dealers or people caught using or carrying drugs, Mauer said. According to the report, high-level drug offenders are those who manufacture, import, grow or distribute drugs to dealers.

The study also found that four out of five drug prisoners are minorities--more than three times the rate of minority drug use in the United States.

Legal experts were not surprised by the racial disparities, noting that even if the prison population was cut by 90%, a disproportionate number of minorities would remain incarcerated.

“It’s a scandal, but it’s old news,” said Franklin Zimring, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. “The big change is that the number of people impacted has gotten tremendously larger as the prison market share of minorities has gotten larger.”

Mauer said the racial inequalities at state prisons reflects society’s two-tier system in which drug abuse is seen as a health issue among white, middle-class families who can afford treatment, but it is criminalized in low-income minority communities that don’t have access to drug treatment and prevention programs.

The study comes as more states facing crippling budget deficits consider scrapping mandatory sentencing laws that critics say fail to reduce serious drug crime and drain state legislatures of precious taxpayer dollars. Instead, these critics want states to enact less punitive measures to deal with nonviolent drug offenders.

The study cites a recent national poll showing that 71% of Americans favor mandatory drug treatment and community service over prison for people convicted of selling small amounts of drugs.

But federal law enforcement officials argue that a balanced approach that combines strong anti-drug policies and education--not just treatment--has proved more effective in winning the country’s war on drugs.

In June, DEA Director Asa Hutchinson told a conference of British criminologists that overall drug use in the Unites States has declined 50% since the late 1970s, with 9.3 million fewer people using illicit drugs. The former U.S. prosecutor cited what he called a shift in the criminal justice system to divert nonviolent drug convicts to treatment and prevention programs.

In California, for example, a voter-approved law offering nonviolent drug offenders treatment options is drawing praise from state officials who say the year-old initiative has helped thousands of people.

But at least one-third of the defendants referred to treatment had dropped out or failed to show up during the first six months the law was in effect.

Zimring said it’s too early to tell how successful these drug offender diversion initiatives are, adding that the public is “enormously ambivalent” about drug punitive laws and politicians are too scared of being perceived as soft on crime to take a stance. The anti-drug policies of the war on crack cocaine in the mid-1980s, he said, continue to resonate.

“Once that kind of policy initiative is launched, it’s very difficult to un-launch,” Zimring said. “Now we’ve got hundreds of thousands of people in state and federal prisons and there is no end in sight, even though the moral panic that produced drastic changes in penal policy and drug enforcement law has passed.”