Ah, this old gem again: "There were also wide racial disparities in who received the enhanced sentences. Sixty-nine percent of inmates serving time for a drug-free school zone offenses were black, though blacks make up only 17 percent of the total Tennessee population."

"The most dangerous misconception about our criminal justice system is that it is pervaded by racial bias. For decades, criminologists have tried to find evidence proving that the overrepresentation of blacks in prison is due to systemic racial inequity. That effort has always come up short. In fact, racial differences in offending account for the disproportionate representation of blacks in prison. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas found that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to be sentenced to prison, however, due to their more extensive criminal histories and the gravity of their current offense."

By the way... "Drug-Free Zone"? Is that like, "Gun-Free Zone"? If so, how's that working?

Bullshit.

For example:

http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/Misdemeanor_marijuana_arrests.pdf

California imprisons African-Americans for marijuana at 10 times the rate of other races

As of June 30, 2011, 1,325 inmates in California prisons were serving sentences for marijuana offenses, including 1,224 imprisoned in 2010, both decreases from the previous year. Marijuana offenders—costing an average of $45,800 per year to imprison and serving an average of 13 months behind bars—cost the state $60 million in 2011.

More important than cost is equal justice. In a previous report, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (2010) found that California imprisoned African-Americans for marijuana offenses at 13 times the rate of Non-black offenders. CJCJ concluded that California’s criminal justice system can be divided into two categories with respect to marijuana: one system for African-Americans, another for all other races.

From the Nat Registry of Exonerations:

http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf

II. Sexual Assault • Judging from exonerations, a black prisoner serving time for sexual assault is three- and-a-half times more likely to be innocent than a white sexual assault convict. The major cause for this huge racial disparity appears to be the high danger of mistaken eyewitness identification by white victims in violent crimes with black assailants.

• Assaults on white women by African-American men are a small minority of all sexual assaults in the United States, but they constitute half of sexual assaults with eyewitness misidentifications that led to exoneration. (The unreliability of cross-racial eyewitness identification also appears to have contributed to racial disparities in false convictions for other crimes, but to a lesser extent.)

• Eyewitness misidentifications do not completely explain the racial disparity in sexual assault exonerations. Some misidentifications themselves are in part the products of racial bias, and other convictions that led to sexual assault exonerations were marred by implicit biases, racially tainted official misconduct and, in some cases, explicit racism.

• African-American sexual assault exonerees received much longer prison sentences than white sexual assault exonerees, and they spent on average almost four-and-a-half years longer in prison before exoneration. It appears that innocent black sexual assault defendants receive harsher sentences than whites if they are convicted, and then face greater resistance to exoneration even in cases in which they are ultimately released.

III. Drug Crimes
• The best national evidence on drug use shows that African Americans and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate. Nonetheless, African Americans are about five times as likely to go to prison for drug possession as whites—and judging from exonerations, innocent black people are about 12 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent white people.

• In general, very few ordinary, low-level drug convictions result in exoneration, regardless of innocence, because the stakes are too low. In Harris County, Texas, however, there have been 133 exonerations in ordinary drug possession cases in the last few years. These are cases in which defendants pled guilty, and were exonerated after routine lab tests showed they were not carrying illegal drugs. Sixty-two percent of the Harris County drug- crime guilty plea exonerees were African American in a county with 20% black residents.

• The main reason for this racial disproportion in convictions of innocent drug defendants is that police enforce drug laws more vigorously against African Americans than against members of the white majority, despite strong evidence that both groups use
at equivalent rates. African Americans are more frequently stopped, searched, arrested, and convicted—including in cases in which they are innocent. The extreme form of this practice is systematic racial profiling in drug-law enforcement.

• Since 1989, more than 1,800 defendants have been cleared in “group exonerations” that followed 15 large-scale police scandals in which officers systematically framed innocent defendants. The great majority were African-American defendants who were framed for drug crimes that never occurred. There are almost certainly many more such cases that remain hidden.

It seems that the code of conduct for Tennessee prosecutors is not to seek justice for victims of crime; but rather to seek more funding and higher conviction rates by making it a crime to be a victim.

Sixty-nine percent of inmates serving time for a drug-free school zone offenses were black, though blacks make up only 17 percent of the total Tennessee population.

The real question is how many white offenders were sent home with no or lesser punishment? Or does the inmate ratio accurately reflect the criminal ratio? That African-Americans are locked up in numbers disproportionate to their population numbers is irrelevant if they disproportionately commit the crimes.

If white offenders are being let go with suspended or lighter sentences than black offenders without mitigating circumstances (e.g., lengthy prior criminal records), then we have an issue.

If the inmate ratio accurately reflects the crime commission ratios, then we have to ask ourselves why these young men are not invested in civilization and its rules. What can we do to get them back; to get them invested in society?

Inmate ratios are a poor (and misleading) measure of discrimination without the attendant crime ratios.

"The best national evidence on drug use shows that African Americans and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate. Nonetheless, African Americans are about five times as likely to go to prison for drug possession as whites"

So what? You are far more likely to go to jail for drug possession when you are selling than buying. Black and Hispanic gangs dominate the market.

Also, I remember commenting on my experiences with bigoted Californians and you got really angry Amy. But now you agree?

"Bullshit"

Perhaps you'd like to reconcile this with the >18:1 kill ratio black men enjoy over police officers.

Go ahead: walk through any of a dozen American cities and see what happens to you - and note the color of your assailant.

You won't do that. You cannot.

Note the black-on-black MURDER rate, and call THAT "bullshit". In some categories of crime, blacks offend at over ten times the rate of other ethnic groups - even when the city and police administration is entirely run by black people.

This isn't something that can be blamed on anybody else.

Sorry, Amy. Insufficient data. And frankly, I'm disappointed that you didn't look at this more objectively. Overrepresentation in prison could mean overrepresentation in crimes.

According to FBI crime statistics, blacks are overrepresented in every crime, with one exception: DUI. Apart from that, they commit more crime that their 13.3 percentage of the population would suggest. And in the crimes of murder and robbery, blacks commit more of this crime than all other races in the U.S. put together.

According to the Center for Disease Control, the leading cause of death in black males, aged 15-35 is homicide. Who's doing this? Other black males. 92% of all blacks murdered are murdered by other blacks. (In white males, homicide is no where near as prevalent, and is a distant third to fifth place as the leading cause of death.)

What I find interesting in all this is that, in this day and age of the internet, a narrative is so often accepted as a fact, and no one ever questions it.

The thing I appreciate the most about the internet is that it killed "they." I remember debates in my younger days in which people would authoritatively declare, "They did studies on this, and they found that..."

All without ever telling us who "they" were.

And it seems that you're of this mindset. A narrative is accepted, and despite the resources literally at your fingertips, you don't investigate it.

And you wouldn't be the only one. Far from it. Black Lives Matter actually counts on peoples' unwillingness to investigate their claims. And their success proves that their faith in their supporters' simple laziness is well-founded.

They tell us that cops are killing black people out of proportion. Yet, studies done by Peter Moskos, of the John Jay University Criminal Justice Department says that simply isn't true.

Harvard Economics professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr. a black man who grew up hating cops his entire life, also set out to prove racial bias in police killings, instead found, in what he called "the most suprising discovery of my career" found no evidence of racial bias in cop killings and that, if anything, cops were more likely to kill white suspects.

Ditto Heather MacDonald, who also found -- surprise, surprise -- that the cops more likely to kill black suspects were far and away black cops. White cops were the least likely, followed closely by Hispanic cops.

And I almost forgot, what is often criminal prosecution for "possession" is plea-bargained down from "selling."

California is experiencing prison overcrowding mostly due to drug offenders. And it's taxing the system - while enriching the prison guards' union.