Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch and the Sentencing Project both released reports strongly indicating that antidrug law enforcement targets African Americans to an astonishing degree.The larger and more shocking of the two, Human Rights Watch's Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States, reports that (among other things): Despite decades of data indicating that between 65% and 70% of drug users are white, African Americans are 10.1 times as likely as whites to face prison time on drug-related charges.

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    * These prison disparities vary by state, with 10.1:1 representing a national average. In Wisconsin, African Americans are 42.4 times as likely as whites to go to prison on drug charges; in Mississippi, "only" 3 times as likely.
    * Arrests of black suspects, even in cases of simple drug possession, also occur at a much higher rate. In Georgia, African Americans who make up 14 percent of drug users represent 58 percent of arrests. When the arrests are narrowed to cocaine possession, the difference is even more stark: African Americans in Georgia make up 22 percent of cocaine users, but 79 percent of arrests.

As the report points out, these disparities aren't necessarily due to police profiling--or at least not exclusively due to police profiling. Geography and policy disparities also play a role:

    Drug law enforcement ... has focused on low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods. This is not a "race neutral" factor. Press attention and community concerns about crack cocaine and political imperatives to be "tough on crime" made those neighborhoods the principal "fronts" in the so-called war on drugs. Practical policing factors have played a role as well: drug transactions in poor minority neighborhoods are more likely to be in public spaces and between strangers, making it easier to undertake arrests, such as via "buy and bust" operations, than it is in the bars, clubs, and private homes where drug dealing by whites is more likely to occur.

Human Rights Watch offers a list of eight suggestions to reduce racial disparities in enforcement. Among these is a greater emphasis on community courts and publicly-funded drug treatment programs, which have the effect of actually discouraging drug use, rather than emphasis on longer prison sentences, which have the effect of breaking community ties and discouraging future employment.

The other report, the Sentencing Project's Disparity by Geography: The War on Drugs in America's Cities, documents an average 3.4:1 per capita ratio of black-white drug arrests in 43 major cities. The report also documents that between 1980 and 2003, the rate of drug arrests for African Americans increased by more than 500% in 11 major cities. The only city where white drug arrests also increased by more than 500% during the same period was Buffalo, New York.

But the most startling thing about this report from my vantage point is not the data on racial disparities itself, which reinforces the conclusions of Targeting Blacks and similar reports, but rather the profoundly arbitrary character of drug law enforcement. Between 1980 and 2003, for example, Tucson experienced an 887% increase in drug arrests--compared to 52% in Phoenix and 13% in San Diego. There is no data suggesting that the drug problem in Tucson is appreciably worse than the drug problem in Phoenix or San Diego (nor is there any data suggesting that the 887% increase in rate of arrest has had a noticeably positive impact on drug use in Tucson), but the three municipalities have elected different local governments with different ideas of how to address the issue of drugs.

Both of these reports testify to the damage that the War on Drugs has done to black urban communities. Convicted felons are often barred from meaningful employment for life, even if the felony in question was drug possession. Prison sentences separate families and communities. Frequent arrests disrupt relationships between police and local communities, often leaving residents feeling more like victims of the criminal justice system than constituents. All of these factors encourage future drug use, which in turn encourages future arrests and future imprisonment.

There have been incremental reforms, both at national and local levels. In Mississippi, for example, the recently-signed SB 2136 eliminated mandatory sentences for some minor drug-related offenses. And the Second Chance Act of 2008 (see "The Prisoner's Dilemma") has created new incentives to help felons transition back into the workforce, a key factor in preventing future recidivism.

But at the root of this problem is a military understanding of the drug problem--a poorly-planned and incompetently managed "War on Drugs" that comes with no definition of victory, no definition of defeat, and nothing else that could be realistically described as an exit strategy. Like the "War on Terror," it is defined as an eternal war against vaguely defined enemies--which means that there must always be, by definition, no end in sight. In order to succeed as political theater, the War on Drugs must continue to fail in practice.

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