Examining Racial Disparities in Drug Arrests

Abstract

The War on Drugs popularized a set of policies and practices that dramatically increased the number of drug arrests, particularly for low-level drug offenses. The War’s tactics have affected Americans of every race; however, minorities have been most dramatically affected. There are several explanations for the observed racial disparity in drug arrests, but relatively little research directly tests these explanations. In this study, we test three common explanations of racial disparities in drug arrest rates. We find that racial disparities in drug arrests cannot be explained by differences in drug offending, nondrug offending, or residing in the kinds of neighborhoods likely to have heavy police emphasis on drug offending. Our findings are most consistent with explanations focusing on racial bias in drug sanctions.

Keywords:

• race and drug offending
• race and crime
• drug offending
• racial crossover

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by Award No. 2011-IJ-CX-0004/USF, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.

Notes

1. Hereafter, for parsimony we use the term “race” to refer to both race and ethnicity.

2. It is important to note that the USA has fought several earlier wars against drugs. Perhaps most notably, President Nixon launched a drug war in the late 1960s. President Nixon’s drug war was different as it emphasized international efforts at crop eradication, the apprehension of high-level drug dealers, and drug treatment (Boyum and Reuter, 2005). Under President Nixon, methadone treatment centers were opened across the country and a majority of federal drug control funds were spent on drug treatment (Goode, 2007; Musto, 1999). President Reagan also attempted to launch an earlier drug war aimed largely at marijuana. For example, Reagan famously said in June of 1982 “[W]e’re running up a battle flag. We can fight the drug problem, and we can win.” Notably, the only specific drug mentioned in this speech was marijuana (Reagan, 1982). This early campaign against drugs did not resonate with lawmakers and led to relatively few policy changes. It was only after crack cocaine gained notoriety in the mid-1980s that Reagan’s attempt to engage in a “new” drug war escalated into what we refer to as the “War on Drugs.”

3. It is important to note that the sharp increase in drug arrests occurred in a period in which drug use was generally declining. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reports that among those 12 years old and older, past month illicit drug use dropped from 14% in 1979 to 12.1% in 1985; thus, drug use was dropping prior to the commencement of the War on Drugs. Drug use continued to drop after the war was declared: 7.7% of those 12 and over reported past month illicit drug use in 1988 and 5.9% reported past month drug use in 1993. Likewise, Monitoring the Future’s survey of high school seniors reveals that drug use peaked in 1979 and dropped markedly in the years preceding the launch of the War. Clearly, drug use was generally decreasing and had been for several years prior to the start of this new drug war.

4. It is important to note that many scholars contend that the War on Drugs is an example of institutional racism (e.g. Duster, 1997; Provine, 2007; Lynch, 2011). For instance, Lynch (2011), using Haney López’s (2000) conceptualization of institutional racism, argues that the War on Drugs is a manifestation of institutional racism in that the War on Drugs’ policies and tactics are affected by widely shared negative stereotypes of African-Americans as drug offenders. (Haney Lopez refers to these negative stereotypes as “racial institutions.”) According to these authors, given that the War on Drugs’ policies and tactics are influenced by racial institutions, it is predictable that these policies would reinforce existing racial status hierarchies (protecting whites and disadvantaging blacks). As David Cole notes many of the aggressive policies and tactics utilized in the War on Drugs such as “street sweeps”, consent searches, foreseeably affect African-Americans disproportionately, while relatively rarely affecting whites. From this perspective, such tactics reinforce the existing racial hierarchy and the very racial institutions that gave rise to the drug war’s (purportedly) racially biased policies/tactics.

5. Note that number of property crimes independent variable is a composite of theft, property destruction, and “other property crimes.” We combined these measures for parsimony and to reduce the likelihood of multicollinearity.

6. Note that we conceptualize prior assaults as both a measure of prior nondrug offending and as a measure of differences in the nature of drug offending. We recognize that our conceptualization of variables that tap differences in the nature/extent of drug offending is subjective and debatable. However, this distinction is purely academic and has no influence the results that follow.

7. The missing data problems associated with not asking many respondents about offending after round 7 are mitigated by the fact that these data are missing at random and therefore should not bias the results; and, the primary analytic strategy employed (fixed-effects regression) handles unbalanced data well.

8. Age was centered at 16 years old to avoid the intercept reflecting an unrealistic age (age 0) and to avoid the intercept from extrapolating beyond the youngest observed age (age 12). We arbitrarily centered age at age 16, because this is the youngest age for which data were available on the vast majority of respondents. Centering age, at some arbitrary but meaningful value, is a necessary step for many kinds of longitudinal data analysis (see e.g. Singer & Willett, 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ojmarrh Mitchell

Ojmarrh Mitchell is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida. Professor Mitchell earned his PhD in Criminal Justice and Criminology from the University of Maryland with a doctoral minor in Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation. His research interests include drugs and crime, race and crime, corrections and sentencing, and meta-analysis.

Michael S. Caudy

Michael S. Caudy is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (ACE!) in the Department of Criminology, Law & Society at George Mason University. His primary research interests include correctional interventions for justice-involved individuals with substance use, mental health, and co-occurring disorders; evidence-based community corrections; and the relationship between race, crime, and criminal justice sanctioning.