The war on drugs has maintained an accumulation of prohibitions on illegal drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing strategies for drug offenders. Incarceration rates have also increased due to the increase of laws against illegal drugs. In Eugene Jarecki’s film, The House I Live In, Jarecki states that the penalties for crack users were harsher than penalties for regular cocaine users. This suggests that penalties are more of a double standard theory. The “War on Drugs” is more of a failure that places restrictions and prohibitions on drug offenders and has not necessarily shown a sense of equal stability; thus, leading to faulty sentences, misinterpretations of the real purpose of this initiative, and an overpopulation of prisons. These sentencing strategies are more disproportionate when it comes to different drugs. For example, crack cocaine and regular white cocaine. “These guidelines have significantly required disproportionately long sentences for drug offenders for 20 years and have required significantly longer sentences for crack then white powder offenders (Radosh, 2008). White powder cocaine is no different than crack cocaine except for the fact that they are different in structure, form, and the way one consumes the drug. This just shows one of the major weaknesses in the way these measures are approached. The main intent when President Richard Nixon first used the term “War on Drugs” in 1971 was to imply the severity of drugs in the United States. This meant that an all-out initiative on drugs, drug trafficking, drug trade, sales, consumption and so on, would be carried out without a sense of leniency. What most people did not anticipate from this “War on Drugs” was that the opposite would happen. Different circums... ... middle of paper ... ...ing overcrowded, and that does not seem to stop any moment. Sentences are more of a double standard theory when it comes to the amount of crack one person has to the amount of cocaine the other has. It will take more than just introducing a term as the “War on Drugs” to actually rid the United States of drugs. Just as it was said in, The House I Live In, drugs will never go away and they will always be there. Works Cited Radosh, P. F. (2008) RESEARCH ARTICLE. War on drugs: gender and race inequities in crime control strategies. Criminal Justice Studies, 2, 167-178. doi: 10.1080/14786010802159830 Schoenfeld, H. (2012). The War on Drugs, the Politics of Crime, and Mass Incarceration in the United States. The Journal of Gender; Race & Justice Drug Policy Alliance. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war
She describes that the mass incarceration policies that were made are a “comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow”(Alexander2016). The War on Drugs escalated quickly in 1982 with the Reagan administration, claiming that they were responding to the crack cocaine epidemic that was going on around black neighborhoods and ghettos. The Reagan administration actually were contributing to the high rise of crack cocaine consumption in the US, mainly inner cities. Alexander points out that the Drug on War had escalated way before 1982, in the mid 1980’s the use of crack cocaine had escalated so quickly that they Federal Drug authorities had to publicize the issue and use scare tactics to try to get control over the
“The House I Live” by Eugene Jarecki is a documentary that sheds a light on America’s ongoing battle with drug abuse by encompassing multiple viewpoints from all walks of life ranging from both sides of the law and everything in between: the police officers, politicians, drug dealers, inmates, grieving parents, authors and journalists about how the war of drugs affect their lives and the lives of others. The overall purpose of the documentary was to show the war on drugs and how it has failed in the United States.
Mandatory minimums for controlled substances were first implemented in the 1980s as a countermeasure for the hysteria that surrounded drugs in the era (“A Brief History,” 2014). The common belief was that stiff penalties discouraged people from using drugs and enhanced public safety (“A Brief History,” 2014). That theory, however, was proven false and rather than less illegal drug activity, there are simply more people incarcerated. Studies show that over half of federal prisoners currently incarcerated are there on drug charges, a 116 percent percentage rise since 1970 (Miles, 2014). Mass incarceration is an ever growing issue in the United States and is the result of policies that support the large scale use of imprisonment on
The War on Drugs is believed to help with many problems in today’s society such as realizing the rise of crime rates and the uprooting of violent offenders and drug kingpin. Michelle Alexander explains that the War on Drugs is a new way to control society much like how Jim Crow did after the Civil War. There are many misconceptions about the War on Drugs; commonly people believe that it’s helping society with getting rid of those who are dangerous to the general public. The War on Drugs is similar to Jim Crow by hiding the real intention behind Mass Incarceration of people of color. The War on Drugs is used to take away rights of those who get incarcerated. When they plead guilty, they will lose their right to vote and have to check application
One policy one could examine to see its implications on incarceration rates in the United States is the “War on Drugs.” This war has taken place since the Nixon administration in the 1970s, and aims to eliminate the possession, importation, and solicitation of illegal substances. This war has multiple fronts in which people are currently fighting, but the domestic theatre of war is a culprit for this rise of incarceration rates. Bobo and Thompson examined this phenomenon and found, “rapid increase in incarceration rates can be traced to the "War on Drugs" and associated sentencing practices” (451). The “War on Drugs” can be seen taking place in predominately urban impoverished African-American communities. As a result, more African-Americans are being arrested for drug crimes, whether they be petty possession misdemeanor crimes or more serious felony solicitation of illegal substance crimes. Further, since these areas are more impoverished, individuals will look for other ways in order to generate income in order to support themselves and their
With everything in life, we can work to fix injustices and a problem in society, but trying to fix what was wrong not only takes time, but also may be imperfect. As mentioned previously race played and still does play a large role in how crime is treated in the United States. This article explains how the racial disparity is not a coincidence and the article provides facts of the disparity, and what the Fair Sentencing Act does. The author begins the article by chronologically exploring the details of how the disparity began. The Anti- Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which was introduced in the Reagan-era, was responsible for the disparity. The Act stated that 1 gram of cocaine was equal to 100 grams of crack (Davis 2011). An extremely large difference. She ends the article explaining that despite the fact that there is a decrease in the ratio, it is still unfair. The Fair Sentencing Act only works to reduce the disparity and does not eliminate it completely (Davis 2011). While the ratio was once 100-1(crack to cocaine), the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 brought it down to 18-1.
The former drug enforcement official McDonough explores the immensely argued topic of the war on drugs and refutes against the possible alternatives to the problem. McDonough disagrees when he writes “In essence, the advocates of decriminalization of illegal drug use assert that incarceration rates are increasing because of bad drug laws resulting from an insane drug war, most of whose victims are well behaved citizens who happen to use illegal drugs”. In making this comment, McDonough integrates this into his work by continuing on to disprove several parts of the quote, such as how the drug laws are not aggressive, most crimes stem from drug use, and only 21 percent of people in correctional facilities were drug offenders. The way in which
It is also very important for people to know about this topic because the issue is not only about drugs but also the growth of inequality between the rich and poor, black and white, upper class and lower class in this country. The war of drugs deals with issues about why they were passed through congress and if there were motives that deals connect directly to black communities. The issues where brought about in Dan Baum book entitled “Smoke and Mirrors” where John Erlichmann, the chief domestic affair advisor talk about how the Drug War fever has been escalated and manipulated from its modest beginnings at the start of the Nixon administration and clarifies the various interests which that escalation has served. He talks about the Drug War on “blacks” and “hippies” but politicians could not say that so had to say the War on “heroin” and “Marijuana”. He also said that “We knew drugs were not the health problem we were making it out to be, but there were political benefits to be gained." This shows that there is more to the war of drugs that the government is letting on.
In short, it highlights the racial dimensions of the War on Drugs and argues about the main reasons why so many black men are being wrongfully held behind bars. It also examines the rights that are taken away from them and how the government is stopping them from becoming normal members of society on the inside and outside. Convicted felons cannot vote for life, and wrongfully convicted felons cannot vote for life. As a result of their criminality, they are legally discriminated against in their ability to obtain housing, employment, education, and public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps. Rather than combat drug activity, the War on Drugs has served as a deliberate strategy to control people of color and remove them from the political process, which is racist in both application and
The War on Drugs, as previously stated, was first introduced by Nixon and reinforced by its preceding presidents. It is a campaign that was launched in 1971, by President Richard Nixon during his time in office, but was not enacted into full force until the 80s when Ronald Reagan was in office. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding went from eight million to 95 million dollars. During the same time, funding for treatment and prevention was reduced (Florio 2016). As a result, convictions for drug offenses, after the announcement of the War on Drugs, are the single most important cause of the explosion of incarceration rates in the United States (Alexander 2012:60). That is to say that if the War on Drugs was not introduced and reinforced following Nixon, the United State’s prison system could have avoided mass incarceration, exceptionally for people of color. To illustrate, nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs (Alexander 2012:60). Sadly, it is more than obvious that it appears that the War on Drugs was a certain phenomenon that was distinctly formulated to target individuals of color. Although the War on Drugs was in reality created to diminish the drugs and punish those that were located with them, it did absolutely the opposite. Few would guess that the
“More than half of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug crimes…” (Branson, 2012). Nonviolent drug offenses in America are unrightly over punished, causing more harm than good to those charged and all American citizens. Drug arrests and imprisonments are far too common and are taking focus off of more important crimes. The sentences for nonviolent drug crimes are far too long and harsh for the crime. Punishment against nonviolent drug crimes are not working and is causing more harm than good. The harsh punishment for nonviolent drug offenses might not seem like a problem at first, but it causes a huge toll on everyone involved. A simple nonviolent drug arrest could ruin an otherwise law abiding citizens’ life. The war on drugs is damaging
Aside from the violence and costly attempts of control that accompany drug trade, there are severe social implications of the U.S war on drugs. One of the major social topics today is that of Marijuana use and punishment in America. Since 1937, over 26 million Americans have been arrested for Marijuana use. [2] The effects and harms are still debated today, yet many people serve time in jails and prisons, waiting to be released with criminal record that will follow them for the rest of their life. Further, those incarcerated are represented by a disproportionate amount ...
The drug war continues to be an ongoing issue in the US – and, to some extent, around the world. The contentious policy, since its inception, has been meticulously documented by historians and filmmakers alike. This paper will explore the failure of “War on Drugs” in the US by engaging with textual scholarly secondary sources to which will be supplemented by a relevant documentary, The House We Live In by Jarecki. It is the war on drugs, and not the drugs themselves, that are harming the nation. As this paper will show, the drug war is a failure on several accounts. Drug prohibition, and the later variation, “war on drugs”, attempt to internationally suppress the inherently complex global drug trade through simplistic means only exasperated the situation. Furthermore, at a national level, the “war on drugs” helped with the criminalization of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens and legitimization of public policies that are insidious in disproportionate consequences to both race, and, ultimately, class; however, it is precisely these factors, as Jarecki argues in his film, that make the drug war successful in other respects.
Every 19 seconds there is a drug arrest in the United States. (Drug War Statistics) On July 17th, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Drug abuse, according to the president, was "public enemy number one". Now, a little more than four decades later the U.S. has the largest incarceration rate in the world, with 51% of those in jail for non-violent drug offenses. The U.S. now spends $51,000,000,000 annually enforcing drug laws, and yet drug addiction rates have remained constant since the 1970’s with about 1.3% of the population being addicted to drugs (Groff). Prohibition does not work. It did not work in the 1930’s with alcohol and it does not work with illegal drugs now. It is extremely expensive and fails to reduce drug use and addiction. It is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.
“Getting tough on drugs inevitably translates into getting soft on nondrug crime,” they write. “When a decision is made to wage a ‘war on drugs,’ other things that criminal justice resources might do have to be sacrificed.”