Although our legal system’s claim to legitimacy depends on the public’s perception of fairness and equity in the decision to arrest, debate persists as to whether the police are racially discriminatory when enforcing drug laws.
Evidence supporting this view emanates from the observation that Blacks are arrested for drugs in numbers far out of proportion to their numbers in the general population, especially for less dangerous types of drugs such as marijuana.
The Black arrest rate for marijuana possession in 2010 was 716 per 100,000 compared to 192 per 100,000 for whites.
Although it is readily acknowledged that Blacks are arrested for marijuana possession in numbers far out of proportion to their numbers in the general population, there’s disagreement about what this situation exactly means.
Some maintain that racial disparity in arrests for marijuana possession results from racially biased drug enforcement practices. Black citizens, according to this perspective, face a higher probability of arrest for marijuana possession because the police view them as having a greater proclivity than whites to use and sell drugs.
Such a negative stereotype is thought to compel police to monitor and arrest Blacks more frequently for marijuana possession than warranted based on their actual usage patterns.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a widely disseminated study advancing the position that the police are racially biased in their use of the arrest sanction for marijuana possession. Although surveys of the general population show that Black and white citizens report similar usage rates of marijuana, the ACLU reports that a Black person is 3.73 times more likely than a white person to be arrested for marijuana possession.
As the ACLU writes:
Despite the pronounced disparities in arrest rates of whites and Blacks for marijuana possession, rates of marijuana use and non-use between whites and Blacks are roughly equal. Therefore, the wide racial disparities in marijuana possession arrest rates cannot be explained by differences in marijuana usage rates between whites and Blacks.
However, a major problem with the ACLU’s analysis is that the self-report data pertaining to an individual’s marijuana use and, for that matter, other illegal behaviors are likely subject to response bias because of a respondent’s hesitancy in reporting socially unacceptable behaviors.
The underreporting of marijuana use by survey respondents is not a serious problem if whites and Blacks underreport their marijuana use at the same rate. However, given that disparaging labels related to drug use that are often used to depict Blacks in our society, the negative stereotype of Black citizens having an enhanced propensity to use illegal drugs might compel them more than whites to give socially acceptable answers in surveys.
This situation would then increase the underreporting of marijuana use by Black citizens in self-report surveys.
The NIJ’s ADAM Program
Although it is difficult to determine whether respondents in surveys are giving truthful answers regarding their illegal drug use, it is possible to make such a determination by analyzing data collected from the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program.
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