5 Worse still, we have managed to replicate-at least on a statistical level-the shame of chattel slavery in this country: The number of black men in prison (792,000) has already equaled the number of men enslaved in 1820.
We are incarcerating African-American men at a rate approximately four times the rate of incarceration of black men in South Africa under apartheid. Pervasive racial targeting provides another peculiarly U.S. The rate at which we lock up our citizens now surpasses every other country that has ever kept such statistics. With 5% of the world's population, the United States now holds 25% of the world's prisoners, winning it the dubious title of the world's leading jailer. 4 While incarceration rates for non-drug crimes have remained remarkably stable over many decades, the drug war has provided a new, ever increasing supply of prisoners over the past 15 years. 3 The population of this vast American Gulag, if brought together in a territory of its own, would rank as the 35th most populous state, just surpassing Nevada's 1.99 million residents. Today, thanks in no small part to harsh sentences for drug crimes, especially for low-level nonviolent offenses, almost two million people fill the prisons and jails of the United States. John Walters, the new drug czar, and Asa Hutchinson, the choice to head the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), are promising ever more interdiction, incarceration and arrests.Īs the nation prepares to careen further down this pernicious path, the drug war's costs urge a different course. ""I want to refresh it, relaunch it if you will."" 2 And Bush's nominees to fight the drug war have joined in Ashcroft's chorus. 1 ""I want to renew it,"" he told CNN's Larry King. Published in NACLA Report on the Americas, July/August 2001ĭespite the growing public feeling that the drug war has failed, Attorney General John Ashcroft has declared that he wants to escalate it. The Drug War is the New Jim Crow by Graham Boyd
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