Human Rights Watch recently issued a report, named “Decades of Disparity: Drug Arrests and Race in the United States”. The report uses data obtained from the FBI to show that African Americans in the USA have been arrested on drug charges at higher rates than whites, even though they engage in drug offences at a comparable rate.  This disparity in law enforcement has been a fact for nearly three decades. Jamie Fellner, the senior counsel to the US program of Human Rights Watch underlines that “Although whites and blacks use and sell drugs, the heavy hand of the law is more likely to fall on black shoulders.”

This report reveals that adult African Americans were arrested on drug charges at rates that were 2.8 to 5.5 times as high as those of white adults in every year from 1980 through to 2007, the last year for which complete data was available. This makes about one in three of the more than 25.4 million adult drug arrestees an African American.

In most cases, arrests were for nothing more serious than possession, and since 1980 these arrests for possession greatly exceeded those for drug sales. Since 1999 this number has increased annually by about eighty percent. The largest proportion of arrest is for the possession of marijuana; in 2000 to 2007 it ranged from 37.7 percent to 42.1 percent.

Jamie Fellner, says “Hauling hundreds of thousands of people down to the station house each year because they have some weed or a rock of crack cocaine in their pocket has had little impact on drug use” He continues “But the stigma of a drug arrest, especially if followed by a conviction, limits employment, education and housing opportunities. A more effective, less destructive drug policy would prioritize treatment, education, and positive social investments in poor communities over arrest and incarceration.”