Pubdate: Mon, 25 Nov 2013
Source: Garden Island (Lihue, HI)
Copyright: 2013 The Garden Island
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/Fyr3Cplk
Website: http://thegardenisland.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/964
Author: Nat Hentoff
Note: Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First 
Amendment and the Bill of Rights. He is a member of the Reporters 
Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Cato Institute, where he 
is a senior fellow.

PRISONS THRIVING ON MARIJUANA ARRESTS

A startling scandal in our so-called criminal justice system is 
largely unnoticed by most Americans because the media in all their 
forms ignore it. But the American Civil Liberties Union does not.

According to a June 3 report from the ACLU, the "over-policing" of 
marijuana use combined with "staggering racial bias" are leading to 
appallingly high numbers of incarcerated African-Americans:

"Between 2001 and 2010, there were over 8 million pot arrests in the 
U.S. That's one bust every 37 seconds and hundreds of thousands 
ensnared in the criminal justice system ... Marijuana use is roughly 
equal among blacks and whites, yet blacks are 3.73 times as likely to 
be arrested for marijuana possession" ("The War on Marijuana in Black 
and White: Report," aclu.org, June 3).

Citing the ACLU's grim statistics, an August report from The 
Economist says, "blacks are almost four times more likely to be 
arrested for marijuana possession ... in some places their arrest is 
over eight times more likely.

"People with criminal records risk losing public benefits, being 
kicked out of public housing and suffering permanent gaps in 
employment and earning prospects" ("Waking life," economist.com, Aug. 24).

In other words, their lives could be essentially over.

The leading, continuing source of documented information on this 
brazen American prejudice is marijuana-arrests.com, "an online 
library about marijuana possession arrests, race and police policy in 
New York City and beyond."

The site is part of the Marijuana Arrest Research project, which 
examines "race, police policy, and the growing number of arrests for 
marijuana possession and other victimless crimes in large U.S. 
cities, especially New York City." The organization's co-director is 
Harry G. Levine, a professor of sociology at Queens College and the 
Graduate Center at City University of New York.

Furthermore, Levine, whom I interviewed when I was at The Village 
Voice for more than 50 years, has definitively reached a national 
audience in the Nov. 18 edition of The Nation magazine with his 
story, "The Scandal of Racist Marijuana Arrests - and What To Do About It."

I admire The Nation for publishing this extensive array of 
revelations, but since its circulation is not extensive, I have 
chosen vital parts of it here as a public service. (As I used to tell 
my journalism students, I sure enjoy breaking scoops, but when 
another source has a crucially important story, it's my 
responsibility to help circulate it.)

Writes Levine: "The vast majority (76 percent) of these 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."

I especially hope candidates for the presidency and Congress in 2016 hear this:

"Police arrest blacks for marijuana possession at higher rates than 
whites in every state and nearly every city and county - as FBI 
Uniform Crime Reports and state databases indisputably show.

"States with the largest racial disparities arrest blacks at six 
times the rate of whites. The list includes Alabama, Illinois, Iowa, 
Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Nevada, New York 
and Wisconsin."

If you live in any of these states, do you believe this should be the 
American standard of justice? Do those arrested for this "victimless" 
crime deserve to have their lives ruined forever? If you don't think 
so, do you plan to organize and do anything about it - whether you 
are black, white or another race?

Thanks to Harry G. Levine's report, let's look at New York City, 
regarded by many tourists as the hippest city in America, and 
Chicago, which gave us the first black president:

"Since 1997, New York City alone has arrested and jailed more than 
600,000 people for possessing marijuana; about 87 percent of the 
arrests are of blacks and Latinos.

"For years, police in New York and Chicago have arrested more young 
blacks and Latinos for simple marijuana possession than for any other 
criminal offense whatsoever." (Italics mine.)

If you are black or Latino and have gone to any of the relatively few 
schools that actually teach American history, do you feel - after 
knowing these documented facts - that you still live in an America 
with a Constitution that's fair to you?

Levine asks readers of all backgrounds to remember this: "Young 
whites (age 18 to 25), however, 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."

And here we come to the most basic source of accountability for this 
triumph of modern-day Jim Crow: "Such dramatic and widespread racial 
disparities are clearly not the product of personal prejudice or 
racism on the part of individual police officers. This is not a 
problem of training or supervision or rogue squads or bad apples.

"It's a systemic problem, a form of institutional racism created and 
administered by people at the highest levels of law enforcement and 
government."

Think hard about that. This entrenched Jim Crow system has existed 
much longer than the Obama administration. It's far from the "new 
normal." So how come We The People allow this to happen in the land 
of the free and the home of the brave?

Oh, it's the press having failed us. Yes, but are the great majority 
of American whites so distant from the lives of black and Latino 
parents, grandparents and siblings that they don't hear about members 
of these families being forever marred by criminal records?

Any American of whatever race who feels disturbed or worse, sickened, 
by what Harry G. Levine has spent his life revealing should read his 
entire article in The Nation. Then they should confront their elected 
representatives with demands that they restore the victims of these 
vicious, un-American Jim Crow laws to full American citizenry.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom