20 February 2006

Building Respect For the Courts

[O]nly 12 percent of drug users are black, but 75 percent of the people who are prosecuted on drug-related charges are black.


From here.

When people don't trust the criminal justice system to be fair, the communities that lack that trust don't cooperate with it. When people don't cooperate with the criminal justice system, it isn't as effective at control violence and crime in our society as it could be. Some parts of the criminal justice system are used in a manner that is racially biased. Those parts of the criminal justice system involved in the "war on drugs" are particularly commonly used in a racially biased manner.

No comments: