Mathews-1

Tyler Mathews

ENG 1201-503

Prof. Dunham

16 March 2019

Annotated Bibliography

With my research, I want to take a closer look at the relationship between the

War on Drugs and the incarceration rates and other effects on minorities in the United

States. More specifically, I want to answer the questions of has the War on Drugs

affected the incarceration rates, and if so, what has the impact been on minorities and

their communities? Has the War on Drugs targeted minorities or have the changes

affected everyone? Finally, is mass incarceration linked to the War on Drugs?

ACLU.org. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/. Accessed 1 March

2019. https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/sentencing-reform/war-drugs-war-

women-and-families

“The War on Drugs = A War on Women and Families” by Lenora Lapidus was published

on the American Civil Liberties Union website in June 2011. The article first addresses

their main claims which is that the War on Drugs has been devastating for women and

their families, but more devastating to women of color due to the significant increases in

the prosecution of lower-level drug offenses, conviction and imprisonment rates, and

mandatory minimum sentences. Using an ACLU report titled “Caught in the Net”, the

author provides actual statistics that reported that since the implementation on the
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policies from the War on Drugs, the number of women incarcerated has increased at

close to double the rate of men and of those women incarcerated, African-Americans

were more than three times and Hispanic women were 69% more than likely to be

incarcerated compared to white women and of all women incarcerated, two-thirds are

mothers. The author then addresses the barriers they face when leaving prison

including obtaining housing, employment, education, and subsistence benefits and

largely due to bans from assistance due to prior drug convictions. Since minority

women are disproportionately poor, they are dependent on those benefits to meet their

basic human needs. The author also uses a specific case of a Minnesota woman to

demonstrate how those policies affect families, as often public housing complexes that

tend to have a higher minority resident rate, ban anyone with former drug convictions

from being on their property, often causing families to alienate themselves from one

another or leave the safety of their homes to be with those whom aren’t allowed to be

there. The author then calls for the end of the War on Drugs, citing the lack of success

of the policies and pointing out that new policies could have better success if the focus

shifted to getting those with addictions mental and medical help for their problem. The

author is the Director for the Women’s Rights Project for the ACLU and I find that both

she and the ACLU are credible. The ACLU has been around for over 100 years and

seeks to defend the rights citizens are protected in the Constitution. This article will

assist me with providing additional evidence that is more specific about answering my

question of how the War on Drugs and its policies have affected minorities and their

communities as a whole. While it was written in 2011, the information is still verifiable

and relevant to current information about my topic.

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Drugpolicy.org. Drug Policy Alliance, 2000. http://www.drugpolicy.org/. Accessed 2

March 2019.

The Drug Policy Alliance website provides up to date statistics and facts regarding the

War on Drugs and the impact on minorities. While there is no specific article here, there

are links to two separate fact sheets so to speak titled “The Drug War, Mass

Incarceration, and Race” and “Race and the Drug War” that both provide evidence that

can support answers to the questions I’m attempting to answer in my paper. The first

link, provides world incarceration rates, ultimately displaying the United States as

having the highest. In fact, the article points out that although the U.S. has less than

5% of the world’s population, nearly 25% of that is in incarcerated. Much like other

articles I’ve listed, the facts listed explain the drastically higher rates at which minorities

are incarcerated and point out that that they are still more likely to be searched,

convicted, and more harshly sentenced for lower-level drug offenses. They also point

out that research has shown that prosecutors in are twice as likely to seek a mandatory

minimum sentence for African-Americans. They touch on the effects of mass

incarceration, providing the statistic of 2.7 million children in the U.S. in households

where one or both of their parents are incarcerated, of which two-thirds of those parents

are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, with the majority being for lower-level drug

offenses. They also indicate more detrimental impacts of those convictions on their

records including loss of child custody, inability to vote, employment, loans, and

licensing, financial aid for school, public housing, and assistance programs. The

second link from the website provides much of the same information provided in the

first, but also includes some of the history of the War on Drugs and impacts over time
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on minorities in the United States. These links and the website itself will help provide

me with important statistics compiled into one place to help bolster my arguments in the

final paper. The Drug Policy Alliance is credible and staffed and overseen by a board of

which its members are former United States higher office officials, Directors, attorneys,

and human rights advocates and provide up to date, accurate statistics about current

policies.

Hager, Eli. “A Mass Incarceration Mystery.” Washington Post, 15 December 2017.

Accessed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/15/a-

mass-incarceration-mystery/?utm_term=.9fb9f25cb414

This article authored by Eli Hager titled “A Mass Incarceration Mystery” and published in

The Washington Post in December 2017, provides a little background regarding the

incarceration rates of African-Americans versus whites in the United States. Using

analysis of the annual reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Hager points

out that the racial inequity in incarceration between African-Americans and whites has

decreased significantly since 2000. He explains that this has occurred due to the

drastic decline in African-Americans being incarcerated and virtually no change or rising

numbers for whites. Talking to experts in the field including law professor, John Pfaff,

the indication is that other than the actual numbers, no one really knows why this is

happening, but they want to find out. After completing significant amounts of research

on the topic, Hager compiled four different theories as to why this occurring in the

United States. The first theory is that crime and subsequent arrests and incarceration

are declining overall. The second theory is that the War on Drugs is now focused on

methamphetamine and opioids rather than crack and marijuana like it has before. The
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third theory given is the declining socioeconomic opportunity for whites which tends to

increase involvement in crime. The last theory given is that the numbers are due to

criminal justice reform occurring in urban cities, where more African-Americans live.

The author concludes the article by explaining that despite the previously mentioned

decline in African-American incarceration, the American prison system is continuing to

cause significant distress in the African-American and Latino communities. This article

was written by Eli Hager who is a staff writer at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news

organization that covers the criminal justice system. The author intended to get more

members of government and lobbyists to look further into this information and point out

that not a lot is being done currently to address the issue and also highlights that there

seems to be no one specific thing, including the War on Drugs, to blame. The Marshall

Project, provides analysis of BJS statistics, making the information reliable and

verifiable. This particular article will be helpful in my research paper because it gives

another viewpoint that highlights the decline of incarceration for African-Americans,

calling into question the “mass incarceration of minorities” topic and will assist with

analyzing the effects that War on Drugs specifically does or doesn’t have on the overall

incarceration of minorities.

Mitchell, Ojmarrh, and Michael S. Caudy. “Examining Racial Disparities in Drug

Arrests.” JQ: Justice Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 2, Apr. 2015, pp. 288–313.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/07418825.2012.761721.

This study titled “Examining Racial Disparities in Drug Arrests” by Ojmarrh Mitchell and

Michael Caudy published in Justice Quarterly in April 2015, sought to test three

common theories of racial disparities in drug arrest rates following the initiation of the
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War on Drugs. The study begins with covering the background information of the

current War on Drugs and explaining how it differed from previous drug wars. The

authors explain that the War on Drugs they speak of is the one announced by President

Reagan on television and the passing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986. The authors

describe the significant changes to US drug policy including the new focus on mid to low

level dealers and drug users along with previously targeted international efforts and the

emphasis on criminal sanctions rather than prevention, treatment, and harm reduction.

The authors further explain that low level offenders have long, mandatory sentences as

a means of suppressing drug use in the U.S. and with the government offering billions in

funding for State and local agencies to adopt tougher policies for sentencing and

arrests, many agencies and States did and helped to enforce the new drug war. The

authors then provide the drug arrest rates for African-Americans versus whites and

include some information regarding Hispanics, pointing out that following the new War

on Drugs initiation, those numbers more than doubled for minorities, but not nearly as

much for whites, indicating clear racial disparities. The authors then provide the details

of three explanations for the racial disparities in drug arrests. The first explanation is

the extent of drug offending by race. Due to rising racial inequality and de-

industrialization, minorities were more vulnerable to using, addiction, and dealing as a

means to support their families. The second explanation focuses on the nature of drug-

offending. Minorities are more likely to live in poorer socioeconomic areas with heavy

involvement of gangs and police surveillance, which might explain the increase of

arrests in those urban-city areas. The last explanation is that the racial disparities in the

arrests can be attributed to racial bias by the police. The authors reference the author
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of “The New Jim Crow”, Michelle Alexander, because she argued that the new War on

Drugs policies greatly expanded the police discretion regarding who they could stop,

search, and arrest and their own racial bias whether purposeful or not, weighs heavily

on those decisions. Mitchell and Caudy then reference several studies where racial

stereotyping was prevalent and indicated that many participants described a black

person when told to think of a drug user or dealer. The authors then provide empirical

support of the three explanations by utilizing statistics gathered through the 2000’s.

They did find that black youth were less likely to use drugs than white youth, but that

black adults were at least 25% more likely to use drugs than that of whites. They

conclude that the research indicates African-Americans over 25 have a drug

dependence rate about 120% higher than whites with a 260% drug arrest rate than

whites. They also conclude that African-Americans are twice as likely to purchase

drugs outdoors and from strangers, lending support to the nature explanation. Last the

third explanation, racial bias of police, is difficult to test as there are no specific methods

of gathering accurate statistics, but likely to be a cause of the higher rates of arrest for

minorities. In conclusion, the authors found support for the different explanations, but

still point out that while it is possible minorities are more likely to offend, there is nothing

saying that they actually do. Both Ojmarrh Mitchell and Michael Caudy are Associate

Professors in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida. They

have conducted much research into this topic. The authors were trying to prove or

disprove some of the most popular explanations for the racial disparities in drug arrests

in the United States. They use many trusted resources for their statistics and research

ad are reliable researchers. This study is not biased because the authors never select
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a “side” but rather present us with popular explanations and try to support those

explanation with research. I believe this study will be extremely helpful with my

research paper because there are a lot of other studies and resources used that will

help me strengthen my argument as well as providing me with specific areas to focus on

when giving my main points in my paper such as how specifically the War on Drugs

policies have affected minorities.

Nicosia, Nancy, et al. “Disparities in Criminal Court Referrals to Drug Treatment and

Prison for Minority Men.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 103, no. 6, June

2013, pp. e77–e84. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2105/AJPH.2013.301222.

The research article titled “Disparities in Criminal Court Referrals to Drug Treatment and

Prison for Minority Men” was authored by Nancy Nicosia, John Mac Donald, and

Jeremy Arkes and published in the American Journal of Public Health in June 2013.

With their research, the authors intended to examine the extent of racial disparities in

sentencing to prison and diversion to drug treatment among all drug-related offenders

and whether those disparities decreased after Proposition 36 in California, which sought

to offer drug treatment rather than incarceration if an individual had less than 3 drug

convictions and had no violent history. During their research, they came to the same

conclusion as the other studies where although there are theories about why minorities,

especially African-Americans, were incarcerated at much higher rates than whites, there

is no singular explanation other than taking into account that they are more likely to be

arrested since they’re more likely to be poor and located in higher-crime therefore

higher-policed areas. Using data collected from the California crime reporting system,

they were able to conclude that prior to the passage of Proposition 36, African-
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Americans were more than twice as likely to be sentenced to prison rather than to drug

treatment for lower-level drug offenses including possession as compared to whites and

Hispanics were also more likely to be sent to prison, but ot to the extent of African-

Americans. Compiling the same data after the implementation of Proposition 36, they

found that the disparities between whites and Hispanics had decreased, the new law

had nearly no impact at all for African-Americans The authors ultimately concluded that

due to of having all of the factors, the racial disparities are no all accounted for with the

theories, however since the disparities between whites and Hispanics as reduced with

the introduction of Proposition 36, similar policies and not like those from the War on

Drugs might help to reduce or eliminate the disparities between African-Americans and

whites. The authors all have their PhD’s and come from public policy, criminology, and

research backgrounds and I find their research to be credible and useful for my final

paper to assist with getting a closer look at the War on Drugs policies and how changes,

such as those like Proposition 36 in California, can assist in changing the racial

disparities in the incarceration system.

Rugy, Veronique de. “How the War on Drugs Fails Black Communities”. Reason, 14

July 2016. Accessed from https://reason.com/archives/2016/07/14/how-the-war-

on-drugs-fails-black-communi

This article titled “How the War on Drugs Fails Black Communities” by Veronique de

Rugy was published in July 2016 in Reason, offers a different perspective of the

impacts of the War on Drugs on the African-American community. The author explains

that the criminalization and illegality of drugs makes them more profitable and therefore

the drug-selling business is more desirable for black men because of their already
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existent difficulties with finding education, employment and job skills that could

otherwise support their families and claims that the War on Drugs has exacerbated the

problem making it a perpetual issue. She indicated that the War on Drugs policies

make it more desirable for young black men to bypass the lower paying regular

employment for the illegal sales of drugs instead. She briefly discusses the statistics of

African-Americans incarcerated for nonviolent, lower-level drug offenses and the

alarming high rate of single-parent households in the African-American communities as

well as the significantly higher rates of lower-income African-American families affected.

The author also points out an effect of the War on Drugs that is new, to me at least,

which is that a policy of the War on Drugs is property forfeiture, which gives police the

ability to seize any property that they say is connected to illegal activities and they don’t

have t be charged with a crime for this to happen ad points out that minorities are often

disproportionately targeted. She cites research and analysis of cases by Oklahoma

Watch that also found that police officers, consciously or not, use racial profiling to

determine which vehicles to search and whose assets to seize. While she does finish

by talking about the 2016 Presidential candidates stance on the War on Drugs which

isn’t as relevant to my paper, she concludes the article by stating that ending the War

on Drugs can change the lives of African-Americans and all Americans for the better.

The author is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason

University and Reason.com and Reason magazine are editorially independent

publications of the Reason Foundation, a national, non-profit research and educational

organization and a reliable source. The article is opinion-based, but does back of the

main claims with statistics and facts that are verifiable. This article will assist me with
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my research by providing more depth for the effects of the War on Drugs and minority

communities as well as provided additional perceptions of the problem.

Schroeder, Karina. “How Systemic Racism Keeps Millions of Black People from Voting”.

Vera.org, 16 February 2018. Accessed from https://www.vera.org/blog/how-

systemic-racism-keeps-millions-of-black-people-from-voting

This article written by Karina Schroeder and published on Vera.org in February 2018, is

titled “How Systemic Racism Keeps Millions of Black People from Voting”. This article

indicates that there is a trend of legislators in several states introducing bills to restore

some voter rights. Using research from a report by The Sentencing Project, the author

details that approximately 2.5% or 6.1 million voters are disenfranchised due to their

past felony convictions and many have already served their prison terms. She further

explained that felony disenfranchisement isn’t equally for all, in fact African-Americans,

who are already overrepresented in the criminal justice system, are more effected, to

the tune of 1 in 13 African Americans are unable to vote which is four times the rate of

other Americans. Citing the report by The Sentencing Project again, she reported that

some states had specifically excluded crimes thought to be committed more by white

people and made the laws to apply to crimes more often to be thought to be committed

by African-Americans. She concludes the article reporting that African-Americans

comprise 38% of all Americans who are unable to vote in America. The author is a

2015 graduate of NYU Wagner's Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Public Service

(FELPS) and also holds BAs in Journalism and Anthropology from the University of

Iowa. Vera works in partnership with local, state, and national government officials to

create change from within by conducting research on working on other related projects
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and is a reliable site for research. The information from this article is relevant to my

topic because it shows how the significant amount of African-Americans who have been

convicted, mostly for nonviolent drug offenses, have lost their rights to vote and how this

has an overall impact on their communities by disengaging them from public policy and

participation in their communities. This will be helpful to bolster my findings in my final

paper.