The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties

This policy brief from the Justice Policy Institute documents racial disparities in the use of prison for drug offenses in 193 counties. It is the first study to examine the relationships between sociodemographic structures and the specific annual rate at which people are admitted to prison for drug offenses, and the first to localize the racially disparate impact of drug imprisonment at the county level.

Key findings include:

While African Americans and whites use and sell drugs at similar rates, African Americans are ten times more likely than whites to be imprisoned for drug offenses.
Of the 175,000 admitted to prison nationwide in 2002, over half were African American, despite the fact that African Americans make up less than 13 percent of the U.S. population.

http://www.justicepolicy.org/content.php?hmID=1811&smID=1581&ssmID=69

Publication Year: 2007

Publisher

Justice Policy Institute
4455 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite B-500
Washington, dc 20008
Phone: 202-737-7270
Website: http://www.justicepolicy.org/
Email: info@justicepolicy.org