More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Started reading
May 29, 2020
five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession of cocaine base—with no evidence of intent to sell.
The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism.
This surge of public concern did not correspond to a dramatic shift in illegal drug activity, but instead was the product of a carefully orchestrated political campaign.
conservative politicians found they could mobilize white racial resentment
Clinton endorsed the idea of a federal “three strikes and you’re out” law,
Clinton Administration’s ‘tough on crime’ policies resulted in the largest increases in federal and state inmate populations of any president in American history.”
The dramatic shift toward punitiveness resulted in a massive reallocation of public resources.
easier for federally assisted public housing projects to exclude anyone with a criminal history—
a new system of racialized social control was created by exploiting the vulnerabilities and racial resentments of poor and working-class whites.
perpetuates the myth that the primary function of the system is to keep our streets safe and our homes secure by rooting out dangerous criminals and punishing them.
Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal prison population and more than half the rise in the state prison population between 1985 and 2000.1
The vast majority of those arrested are charged with relatively minor crimes. In
most people in state prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or significant selling activity.
arrests for marijuana possession—
accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.
Supreme Court has seized every opportunity to facilitate the drug war, primarily by eviscerating Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by the police.
Known as the stop-and-frisk rule, the Terry decision stands for the proposition that, so long as a police officer has “reasonable articulable suspicion” that someone is engaged in criminal activity and dangerous, it is constitutionally permissible to stop, question, and frisk him or her—even in the absence of probable cause.
stops, interrogations, and searches of ordinary people driving down the street, walking home from the bus stop, or riding the train have become commonplace—at least for people of color. As
Never do the officers inform passengers that they are free to remain silent or to refuse to answer questions.
By and large, however, the hit rates are low. For example, in one case, a sweep of one hundred buses resulted in only seven arrests.
“The average person encountered will feel obliged to stop and respond. Few will feel that they can walk away or refuse to answer.”
consent
searches are valuable tools for the police only because hardly anyone dares to say no.
A classic pretext stop is a traffic stop motivated not by any desire to enforce traffic laws, but instead motivated by a desire to hunt for drugs in the absence of any evidence of illegal drug activity. In other words, police officers use minor traffic violations as an excuse—a pretext—to search for drugs, even though there is not a shred of evidence suggesting the motorist is violating drug laws.
Allowing the police to use minor traffic violations as a pretext for baseless drug investigations would permit them to single out anyone for a drug investigation without any evidence of illegal drug activity whatsoever.
No one needs to be informed of their rights during a stop or search, and police may use minor traffic stops as well as the myth of “consent” to stop and search anyone they choose for imaginary drug crimes, whether or not any evidence of illegal drug activity actually exists.
police may arrest motorists for minor traffic violations and throw them in jail (even if the statutory penalty for the traffic violation is a mere fine, not jail time).
Another legal option for officers frustrated by a motorist’s refusal to grant “consent” is to bring a drug-sniffing dog to the scene.
Hardly anyone files a complaint, because the last thing most people want to do after experiencing a frightening and intrusive encounter with the police is show up at the police station where the officer works and attract more attention to themselves.
that most people stopped and searched in the War on Drugs are perfectly innocent of any crime.
It has been estimated that 95 percent of Pipeline stops yield no illegal drugs.27 One study found that up to 99 percent of traffic stops made by federally funded narcotics task forces result in no citation and that 98 percent of task-force searches during traffic stops are discretionary searches in which the officer searches the car with the driver’s verbal “consent” but has no other legal authority to do so.
Why would police prioritize drug-law enforcement?
announcement of a War on Drugs was therefore met with some confusion and resistance within law enforcement, as well as among some conservative commentators.
in order for it to succeed in achieving its political goals—it was necessary to build a consensus among state and local law enforcement agencies that the drug war should be a top priority in their hometowns. The solution: cash.
Congress revised the program that provides federal aid to law enforcement, renaming it the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program
law enforcement agencies across the country began to compete for funding, equipment, and training. By
SWAT, teams) were quickly formed in virtually every major city to fight the drug war.
Those who survive SWAT raids are generally traumatized by the event.
SWAT raids have not been limited to homes, apartment buildings, or public housing projects. Public high schools have been invaded by SWAT teams
the explosion of SWAT teams was traceable to the Pentagon’s weaponry giveaway program, as well as to federal programs that provide money to local police departments for drug control.
The size of the disbursements was linked to the number of city or county drug arrests.
state and local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets they seized when waging the drug war. This dramatic change in policy gave state and local police an enormous stake in the War on Drugs—not in its success, but in its perpetual existence.
Because those who were targeted were typically poor or of moderate means, they often lacked the resources to hire an attorney or pay the considerable court costs.
Drug forfeiture laws are frequently used to allow those with assets to buy their freedom, while drug users and small-time dealers with few assets to trade are subjected to lengthy prison terms.
The Reform Act resulted in a number of significant due-process changes,
owner of the property is not entitled to the appointment of counsel in the forfeiture proceeding, unless he or she has been charged with a crime.
This helps to explain why up to 90 percent of forfeiture cases in some jurisdictions are not challenged. Most people simply cannot afford the considerable cost of hiring an attorney.
state and federal law enforcement agencies, will continue to have a direct pecuniary interest in the profitability and longevity of the drug war.
any dramatic effort to scale back the war may be publicly condemned as “soft” on crime. The war has become institutionalized.
Defendants are typically denied meaningful legal representation, pressured by the threat of a lengthy sentence into a plea bargain, and then placed under formal control—in prison or jail, on probation or parole.
