Sentencing War: Disparities and Injustices in Cracking Down on Cocaine
BY HAYLEY LEVY
The United States, with only 5 percent of the world’s population, has 25 percent of the world’s prison population. Presently, individuals in the United States are incarcerated at a rate of 748 inmates per 100,000 people. The country with the closest rate is Russia, with a rate of 600 incarcerated per 100,000 residents. Communist China, the largest country in the world in terms of population, incarcerates individuals at a rate of 120 per 100,000. Although China has four times the population, the democratic United States – the land of the free – incarcerates its population at a rate six times that of China. These rates of incarceration have not always been the norm in the United States, and a higher incidence of crime is not to blame. Changes in prison sentencing laws since the onset of the War on Drugs in the ‘70s, not rising crime rates, have led the United States to have the largest incarcerated population in the world.
President Richard Nixon hinted at the birth of a government drug offensive when he declared drug abuse “America’s public enemy number one” in 1971. The government’s drug war gained momentum when politicians realized “get tough on crime” language and media hype led to increased electoral success. Ironically, when President Ronald Reagan officially announced the “War on Drugs” in October 1982, only a small percentage of Americans viewed drugs as an important issue.
Today when asked about the status of the War on Drugs many Americans do not know what it is, see it as a policy of the past, or believe it is being fought in Central and South America rather than the streets of their own country. As drug use is one of the largest causes for incarceration, then perhaps the War on Drugs has ultimately failed. Instead of tackling drug abuse and its effects, drug laws have instead isolated parts of the American population by locking people up and throwing away the key.
Since the advent of the War on Drugs, the United States’ prison population has climbed by 800 percent, mostly due to expanded sentencing for drug offenders, especially crack offenders, while the national population as a whole has only increased by a third. The incarceration rates seen today are defined as “mass incarceration” because the large number of people behind bars is disproportionate to the size of the country’s population. Moreover, the United States not only has the world’s highest incarceration rate, but the highest rate of recidivism as well.
One might think that incarceration rates are the result of increased crime rates, but instead, studies show increased incarceration and recidivism rates stem from policy choices and discriminatory practices. Many studies show that prison statistics convey more about the differential enforcement of the law, race, social class, and other biases than crime itself. Incarceration rates, therefore, turn out to be a faulty measure of crime. The tough stance of the War on Drugs did little to impact illegal drug use. The nation’s incarceration rate has grown significantly due to expanded drug sentencing during the past forty years of the War on Drugs; over the same time period, illegal drug use has remained relatively consistent. Sentencing for other crimes has remained unchanged over that same time period while the opposite has happened with drug offenses. These statistics clearly do not match up, and, instead, illustrate how unjust drug sentencing laws in the United States are threatening civil rights and costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year.
Cost-wise, the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ budget alone grew by 600 percent since the start of the War on Drugs. Today, federal prisons are filled to nearly 40 percent over capacity. In the United States there are differing levels of incarceration, such as county, state, or federal facilities. Convicted individuals or those awaiting trial are sentenced to a prison facility on the basis of the crime committed. Individuals convicted of federal crimes, which for drug crimes mostly depend on the amount of drugs involved, are sentenced under federal law and then sent to federal prison facilities. The federal prison system houses 10 percent of the country’s inmates. The federal system’s population may seem small, but it is larger than any single state’s prison population. Ever since the War on Drugs began, the federal prison population has multiplied more than nine times over. About half of all federal prisoners are drug offenders. On average, drug offenders will serve longer prison sentences than those convicted of most other crimes.
The evolution of America’s approach to drug control radically changed the United States’ approach to crime, drug enforcement, and punishment. Regardless of the fact that current evidence shows a downward slope in crime rates, drug arrests and incarceration rates continue to rise.