United States Senate Youth Program / Hearst Scholarship. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z- A - - B - C - - D - back to top- E - - F - - G - back to top- H - - I - J - K - L - back to top- M - - N - National Association. State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) Report - What Are We Spending on Special Education Services in the. United States, 1. NCSET. Essential Tool& - Increasing Rates of School Completion. Moving from Policy and Research to Practice. NIMAS/NIMAC Resources and Providers. The following treaties have been submitted to the Senate; these treaties have not received Senate advice and consent to ratification. International Labor Organization. High school juniors and seniors are eligible to apply for this program. The Hearst Foundation requires that to obtain scholarship funds, a student must, within two. Non- Regulatory Guidance. Nonpublic. Special Education Programs. Annual Conference on Best Practices for Nonpublic Special Education Programs. Notice & Consent. Forms (provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, Gujarati, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Urdu, Vietnamese)Notice of. Procedural Safeguards- O - - P - back to top- Q - R - - S - back to top- T - - U - - V - W - X - Y - Z - back to top. Race, Drugs, and Law Enforcement in the United States. Part I: Race Defines the Problem. Part II: Who Engages in Drug Offenses? Arrests and Incarceration of Drug Offenders. Race, Crime, and Punishment. United States Senate Youth Program 2009 HarleyPart III: A Human Rights Framework For the War on Drugs. Racial Discrimination Under International Human Rights Law. Conclusion. Since the mid- 1. United States has pursued aggressive law enforcement strategies to curtail the use and distribution of illegal drugs. The costs and benefits of this national . Relative to their numbers in the general population and among drug offenders, black Americans are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and incarcerated on drug charges. Their relative indifference- and that of the public at large- no doubt reflects, to varying degrees, partisan politics, .
But to some extent it also reflects conscious and unconscious views about race. Indeed, those views have been woven into the very fabric of American anti- drug efforts, influencing the definition of the . Perhaps without realizing it, they have accepted the same definition of discrimination that the courts use in constitutional equal protection cases- absent ill- intent, there is no discrimination. Prohibited discrimination occurs where there is an unjustifiable disparate impact on a racial or ethnic group, regardless of whether there is any intent to discriminate against that group. Where official policies or practices are racially discriminatory, the State party to the treaty must act affirmatively to prevent or end them. Indeed, full compliance requires elimination of racial inequalities resulting from structural racism. But ICERD is more protective than those laws. If it is to satisfy its treaty obligations, the United States must . Racial disparities in the war on drugs may be one of the most striking examples of this country's failure to satisfy ICERD. The United States ratified the treaty with a number of reservations, understandings and declarations (RUDs) designed to ensure that becoming a party to ICERD would not require any changes in United States law. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination created by the treaty reviews States Parties' policies and practices and makes recommendations, but has no power to compel compliance with those recommendations. Even if it does not provide a basis for a cause of action, plaintiffs in civil rights litigation can argue that United States laws should be interpreted in accordance with the treaty. Wholly apart from litigation, the Convention reflects an international consensus on the importance of eliminating racial discrimination, including that which is indirect and hidden behind ostensibly race neutral laws. As a country which prides itself as a leader in promoting racial equality, the United States does not want to be seen as violating or ignoring its treaty obligations. ICERD thus offers a powerful rights- based framework for individuals and organizations seeking to call attention to and develop support for measures to eliminate racial injustice in the United States' war on drugs, as well as in so many other dimensions of American life. At the moment, many public officials are unaware of ICERD. There have been numerous detailed, cogent, and, in my judgment, appropriately damning assessments of the war on drugs, including the ways in which it has violated the rights of black Americans. I make no effort here to do justice to that literature. United States Senate Youth Program 2009 MuranoMy more limited goals are twofold: First, to remind readers that the war on drugs has always been and continues to be targeted primarily at black drug offenders. And second, to encourage readers who care about racial discrimination in the United States criminal justice system in general, or in drug control efforts in particular, to include ICERD in their arsenal of weapons for justice. Although the majority of those who shared, sold, or transferred serious drugs. The racially disproportionate drug arrests result from the police department's emphasis on the outdoor drug market in the racially diverse downtown area of the city, its lack of attention to other outdoor markets that are predominantly white, and its emphasis on crack. Three- quarters of the drug arrests were crack- related even though only an estimated one- third of the city's drug transactions involved crack. Not surprisingly then, seventy- nine percent of those arrested on crack charges were black. The focus on crack offenders, for example, did not appear to be a function of the frequency of crack transactions compared to other drugs, public safety or public health concerns, crime rates, or citizen complaints. The researchers ultimately concluded that the Seattle Police Department's drug law enforcement efforts. Seattle's drug problem . Indeed, the widespread racial typification of drug offenders as racialized . These images appear to have had a powerful impact on popular perceptions of potential drug offenders, and, as a result, law enforcement practices in Seattle. Indeed, they provided the impetus for the . The use of cocaine, primarily powder cocaine, had increased in the late 1. Politicians were able to woo a white electorate anxious about its declining status through the race- coded language of . Crack cocaine was perceived as a drug of the Black inner- city urban poor, while powder cocaine, with its higher costs, was a drug of wealthy whites . This framing of the drug in class and race- based terms provides important context when evaluating the legislative response. Urban blacks, the population most burdened by concentrated socio- economic disadvantage, became the population at which the war on drugs was targeted.? They pictured unkempt African- American men and women slouched in alleyways or young blacks hanging around urban street corners. They represent a comparably small proportion of those who engage in non- possession drug offenses as well. They also frequently engage in illegal drug distribution activities- e. Although there is little direct research on the race of drug sellers, for example, that which exists suggests a racial breakdown among sellers similar to that among users. National surveys of drug abuse conducted by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have sometimes included questions on drug selling. In 1. 99. 1, 0. 7% of adult whites and 1. Although the proportion of sellers was twice that among blacks than among whites, in absolute numbers far more whites (9. Fifteen years later, 1. Blacks thus represented 1. For example, the study of Seattle's drug market, discussed above, indicates that the majority of the drug sellers are white (as are a majority of the users). Empirical research addressing this question is not available, but experts suggest that higher positions in the drug trade are not likely to be held by black individuals. The race of persons in the upper echelons of the drug trade is also not particularly relevant, because the overwhelming preponderance of drug offenders entering the criminal justice system are low- level non- violent offenders. For example, between 1. Arrests and Incarceration of Drug Offenders. All other things being equal, if blacks constitute an estimated 1. But all other things are not equal. The data demonstrate clearly and consistently that blacks have been and remain more likely to be arrested for drug offending behavior relative to their percentage among drug offenders than whites who engage in the same behavior. There are many reasons for the racial disparities in drug arrests, including demographics. Race becomes one of the readily observable visual clues to help identify drug suspects, along with age, gender and location. There is a certain rationality to this- if you are in poor black neighborhoods, drug dealers are more likely to be black. Local distribution networks are often monoracial; downscale markets are often neighborhood- based; and downscale urban neighborhoods are often segregated . The law and practice of drug enforcement is market- specific, and the markets are divided by race and class. Conspicuous drug use is generally in your low- income neighborhoods that generally turn out to be your minority neighborhoods . It's easier for police to make an arrest when you have people selling drugs on the street corner than those who are . The end result is that more blacks are arrested than whites because of the relative ease in making those arrests. Relative to population, blacks have been arrested on drug charges at consistently higher rates than whites. In 1. 98. 0 blacks were arrested at rates almost three (2. In the years with the worst disparities, between 1. In the last six years, the ratio of black to white drug arrest rates has ranged between 3. Yet although marijuana use is prevalent across races. In 2. 00. 7, for example, 7. In eleven cities, black drug arrests rose by more than 5. Incarceration. The racial disparities evident in drug arrests grow larger as cases wind their way through the criminal justice system. As Table 1 reveals, blacks are sent to prison on drug charges at greater rates than whites in every state for which the data are available. The legislative history of federal crack sentencing laws, for example, provides reason . Politicians have been able to reap the electoral rewards of endorsing harsh drug policies because the group that suffered most from those policies- black Americans- lacked the numbers to use the political process to secure a different strategy. It could have restricted prison to only the most serious drug offenders (e. But the choice of arrest and imprisonment as the primary anti- drug strategy evokes the infamous phrase from the Vietnam War: . Yet the racial patterns of persons arrested and incarcerated on drug charges are distantly related, at best, to racial patterns of drug offending. There may be explanations for the disparate impact, but can it be reconciled with principles of equal protection and non- discrimination? United States Law. Drug laws are race- neutral on their face.
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