TEACH ING
\nTOLERANCE
\nA PROJECT OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
\nTOLERANCE.ORG
\nTEACHING
\nThe New Jim Crow
\nTHE NEW JIM CROW by Michelle Alexander
\nCHAPTER 2
\nThe Lockdown
\nWe may think we know how the criminal justice system works. Television is overloaded
\nwith fictional dramas about police, crime, and prosecutors\u2014shows such as Law & Order. A
\ncharismatic police officer, investigator, or prosecutor struggles with his own demons while
\nheroically trying to solve a horrible crime. He ultimately achieves a personal and moral
\nvictory by finding the bad guy and throwing him in jail. That is the made-for-TV version of the criminal justice system. It perpetuates the myth that the primary
\nfunction of the system is to keep our streets safe and our homes secure by
\nrooting out dangerous criminals and punishing them.
\nThose who have been swept within the criminal justice system know that
\nthe way the system actually works bears little resemblance to what happens
\non television or in movies. Full-blown trials of guilt or innocence rarely occur;
\nmany people never even meet with an attorney; witnesses are routinely paid and
\ncoerced by the government; police regularly stop and search people for no reason whatsoever; penalties for many crimes are so severe that innocent people plead guilty, accepting
\nplea bargains to avoid harsh mandatory sentences; and children, even as young as fourteen,
\nare sent to adult prisons.
\nIn this chapter, we shall see how the system of mass incarceration actually works. Our focus
\nis the War on Drugs. The reason is simple: Convictions for drug offenses are the single most
\nimportant cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the United States. [M]ore than 31
\nmillion people have been arrested for drug offenses since the drug war began.1
\nTo put the matter in perspective, consider this: there are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug
\noffenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.2
\nNothing has contributed more to the
\nsystematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs.
\nBefore we begin our tour of the drug war, it is worthwhile to get a couple of myths out of the
\nway. The first is that the war is aimed at ridding the nation of drug \u201ckingpins\u201d or big-time
\ndealers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of those arrested are
\nnot charged with serious offenses. In 2005, for example, four out of five drug arrests were
\nfor possession, and only one out of five was for sales. Moreover, most people in state prison
\nfor drug offenses have no history of violence or significant selling activity.3
\nThe second myth is that the drug war is principally concerned with dangerous drugs. Quite
\nto the contrary, arrests for marijuana possession\u2014a drug less harmful than tobacco or alcohol\u2014accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.4
\nAbridged excerpt
\nfrom The New Jim
\nCrow: Mass Incarceration in the Age
\nof Colorblindness \u2014
\nCopyright \u00a9 2010,
\n2012 by Michelle
\nAlexander. Reprinted
\nby permission of
\nThe New Press.
\nthenewpress.com
\nBOOK
\nEXCERPT
\nLESSON 6
\n2
\nTEACHING THE NEW JIM CROW
\nLESSON 6
\nTOLERANCE.ORG
\n\u00a9 2010, 2012 BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEW PRESS.
\nThe percentage of drug arrests that result in prison sentences (rather than dismissal, community service, or probation) has quadrupled, resulting in a prison-building boom the likes
\nof which the world has never seen. In two short decades, between 1980 and 2000, the number of people incarcerated in our nation\u2019s prisons and jails soared from roughly 300,000 to
\nmore than 2 million. By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans\u2014or one in every 31
\nadults\u2014were behind bars, on probation, or on parole.5
\nWe begin our exploration of the drug war at the point of entry\u2014arrest by the police\u2014and
\nthen consider how the system of mass incarceration is structured to reward mass drug
\narrests and facilitate the conviction and imprisonment of an unprecedented number of
\nAmericans, whether guilty or innocent.
\nRules of the Game
\nFew legal rules meaningfully constrain the police in the War on Drugs. This may sound
\nlike an overstatement, but upon examination it proves accurate. The absence of significant
\nconstraints on the exercise of police discretion is a key feature of the drug war\u2019s design. It
\nhas made the roundup of millions of Americans for nonviolent drug offenses relatively easy.
\nWith only a few exceptions, the Supreme Court has seized every opportunity to facilitate
\nthe drug war, primarily by eviscerating Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by the police.
\nMost Americans do not know what the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution actually says or what it requires of the police. It states, in its entirety:
\nThe right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
\nunreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but
\nupon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
\nplace to be searched, and the person or things to be seized.
\nUntil the War on Drugs, courts had been fairly stringent about enforcing the Fourth
\nAmendment\u2019s requirements.
\nThe Fourth Amendment is but one example. Virtually all constitutionally protected civil
\nliberties have been undermined by the drug war. The Court has been busy in recent years approving mandatory drug testing of employees and students, upholding random searches and
\nsweeps of public schools and students, permitting police to obtain search warrants based on
\nan anonymous informant\u2019s tip, expanding the government\u2019s wiretapping authority, legitimating the use of paid, unidentified informants by police and prosecutors, approving the use
\nof helicopter surveillance of homes without a warrant, and allowing the forfeiture of cash,
\nhomes, and other property based on unproven allegations of illegal drug activity.
\nThese new legal rules have ensured that anyone, virtually anywhere, for any reason, can become a target of drug-law enforcement activity.
\n3
\nTEACHING THE NEW JIM CROW
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\n\u00a9 2010, 2012 BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEW PRESS.
\nUnreasonable Suspicion
\nOnce upon a time, it was generally understood that the police could not stop and search
\nsomeone without a warrant unless there was probable cause to believe that the individual
\nwas engaged in criminal activity. That was a basic Fourth Amendment principle. In Terry v.
\nOhio, decided in 1968, the Supreme Court modified that understanding, but only modestly,
\nby ruling that if and when a police officer observes unusual conduct by someone the officer
\nreasonably believes to be dangerous and engaged in criminal activity, the officer \u201cis entitled
\nfor the protection of himself and others in the area\u201d to conduct a limited search \u201cto discover
\nweapons that might be used against the officer.\u201d6
\nKnown as the stop-and-frisk rule, the Terry
\ndecision stands for the proposition that, so long as a police officer has \u201creasonable articulable
\nsuspicion\u201d that someone is engaged in criminal activity and dangerous, it is constitutionally
\npermissible to stop, question, and frisk him or her\u2014even in the absence of probable cause.
\nJustice Douglas dissented in Terry on the grounds that \u201cgrant[ing] police greater power
\nthan a magistrate [ judge] is to take a long step down the totalitarian path.\u201d7
\nHis voice was
\na lonely one. Most commentators at the time agreed that affording police the power and
\ndiscretion to protect themselves during an encounter with someone they believed to be a
\ndangerous criminal is not \u201cunreasonable\u201d under the Fourth Amendment.
\nHistory suggests Justice Douglas had the better of the argument. In the years since Terry,
\nstops, interrogations, and searches of ordinary people driving down the street, walking
\nhome from the bus stop, or riding the train, have become commonplace\u2014at least for people
\nof color. Today it is no longer necessary for the police to have any reason to believe that
\npeople are engaged in criminal activity or actually dangerous to stop and search them. As
\nlong as you give \u201cconsent,\u201d the police can stop, interrogate, and search you for any reason or
\nno reason at all.
\nPoor Excuse
\nSo-called consent searches have made it possible for the police to stop and search just
\nabout anybody walking down the street for drugs. All a police officer has to do in order to
\nconduct a baseless drug investigation is ask to speak with someone and then get their \u201cconsent\u201d to be searched. So long as orders are phrased as a question, compliance is interpreted
\nas consent. \u201cMay I speak to you?\u201d thunders an officer. \u201cWill you put your arms up and stand
\nagainst the wall for a search?\u201d Because almost no one refuses, drug sweeps on the sidewalk
\n(and on buses and trains) are easy. People are easily intimidated when the police confront
\nthem, hands on their revolvers, and most have no idea the question can be answered, \u201cNo.\u201d
\nBut what about all the people driving down the street? How do police extract consent from
\nthem? The answer: pretext stops.
\nLike consent searches, pretext stops are favorite tools of law enforcement in the War on
\nDrugs. A classic pretext stop is a traffic stop motivated not by any desire to enforce traffic
\nlaws, but instead motivated by a desire to hunt for drugs in the absence of any evidence of
\nillegal drug activity. In other words, police officers use minor traffic violations as an excuse\u2014a pretext\u2014to search for drugs, even though there is not a shred of evidence suggesting the motorist is violating drug laws. Pretext stops, like consent searches, have received
\nthe Supreme Court\u2019s unequivocal blessing.
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\nTEACHING THE NEW JIM CROW
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\nTOLERANCE.ORG
\n\u00a9 2010, 2012 BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEW PRESS.
\nKissing Frogs
\nCourt cases involving drug-law enforcement almost always involve guilty people. Police
\nusually release the innocent on the street\u2014often without a ticket, citation, or even an apology\u2014so their stories are rarely heard in court. Hardly anyone files a complaint \u2026 For good
\nreason, many people\u2014especially poor people of color\u2014fear police harassment, retaliation,
\nand abuse. After having your car torn apart by the police in a futile search for drugs, or being forced to lie spread-eagled on the pavement while the police search you and interrogate
\nyou for no reason at all, how much confidence do you have in law enforcement?
\nThe inevitable result is that the people who wind up in front of a judge are usually guilty of
\nsome crime. The parade of guilty people through America\u2019s courtrooms gives the false impression to the public\u2014as well as to judges\u2014that when the police have a \u201chunch,\u201d it makes
\nsense to let them act on it.
\nThe truth, however, is that most people stopped and searched in the War on Drugs are perfectly innocent of any crime. The police have received no training that enhances the likelihood they will spot the drug criminals as they drive by and leave everyone else alone. To the
\ncontrary, tens of thousands of law enforcement officers have received training that guarantees precisely the opposite. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) trains police to conduct
\nutterly unreasonable and discriminatory stops and searches throughout the United States.
\nPerhaps the best known of these training programs is Operation Pipeline. The DEA
\nlaunched Operation Pipeline in 1984 as part of the Reagan administration\u2019s rollout of the
\nWar on Drugs. Officers learn, among other things, how to use a minor traffic violation as a
\npretext to stop someone, how to lengthen a routine traffic stop and leverage it into a search
\nfor drugs, how to obtain consent from a reluctant motorist, and how to use drug-sniffing
\ndogs to obtain probable cause.8
\nThe program\u2019s success requires police to stop \u201cstaggering\u201d numbers of people in shotgun
\nfashion.9
\nThis \u201cvolume\u201d approach to drug enforcement sweeps up extraordinary numbers
\nof innocent people. As one California Highway Patrol Officer said, \u201cIt\u2019s sheer numbers.
\n\u2026 You\u2019ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince.\u201d10 Accordingly, every year, tens
\nof thousands of motorists find themselves stopped on the side of the road, fielding questions about imaginary drug activity, and then succumbing to a request for their vehicle to
\nbe searched\u2014sometimes torn apart\u2014in the search for drugs. It has been estimated that 95
\npercent of Pipeline stops yield no illegal drugs.11
\nThe \u201cdrug-courier profiles\u201d utilized by the DEA and other law enforcement agencies for
\ndrug sweeps on highways, as well as in airports and train stations, are notoriously unreliable. The profile can include traveling with luggage, traveling without luggage, driving an
\nexpensive car, driving a car that needs repairs, driving with out-of-state license plates, driving a rental car, driving with \u201cmismatched occupants,\u201d acting too calm, acting too nervous,
\ndressing casually, wearing expensive clothing or jewelry, being one of the first to deplane,
\nbeing one of the last to deplane, deplaning in the middle, paying for a ticket in cash, using
\nlarge-denomination currency, using small-denomination currency, traveling alone, traveling with a companion, and so on. Even striving to obey the law fits the profile!
\n5
\nTEACHING THE NEW JIM CROW
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\n\u00a9 2010, 2012 BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEW PRESS.
\nThe Supreme Court has allowed use of drug-courier profiles as guides for the exercise of
\npolice discretion. Although it has indicated that the mere fact that someone fits a profile
\ndoes not automatically constitute reasonable suspicion justifying a stop, courts routinely
\ndefer to these profiles, and the Court has yet to object.
\nIt Pays to Play
\n[I]t is fair to wonder why the police would choose to arrest such an astonishing percentage
\nof the American public for minor drug crimes. The fact that police are legally allowed to
\nengage in a wholesale roundup of nonviolent drug offenders does not answer the question
\nwhy they would choose to do so, particularly when most police departments have far more
\nserious crimes to prevent and solve. Why would police prioritize drug-law enforcement?
\nDrug use and abuse is nothing new; in fact, it was on the decline, not on the rise, when the
\nWar on Drugs began.
\nOnce again, the answer lies in the system\u2019s design. Every system of control depends for its
\nsurvival on the tangible and intangible benefits that are provided to those who are responsible for the system\u2019s maintenance and administration. This system is no exception.
\nAt the time the drug war was declared, illegal drug use and abuse was not a pressing concern in most communities. The announcement of a War on Drugs was therefore met with
\nsome confusion and resistance within law enforcement \u2026 . Many state and local law enforcement officials were less than pleased with the attempt by the federal government to
\nassert itself in local crime fighting, viewing the new drug war as an unwelcome distraction
\n\u2026 from more serious crimes, such as murder, rape, grand theft, and violent assault\u2014all of
\nwhich were of far greater concern to most communities than illegal drug use.
\nThe resistance within law enforcement to the drug war created something of a dilemma
\nfor the Reagan administration. In order for the war to actually work\u2014that is, in order for
\nit to succeed in achieving its political goals\u2014it was necessary to build a consensus among
\nstate and local law enforcement agencies that the drug war should be a top priority in their
\nhometowns. The solution: cash. Huge cash grants were made to those law enforcement
\nagencies that were willing to make drug-law enforcement a top priority.
\nIn 1988, at the behest of the Reagan administration, Congress revised the program that
\nprovides federal aid to law enforcement, renaming it the Edward Byrne Memorial State
\nand Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program after a New York City police officer who
\nwas shot to death while guarding the home of a drug-case witness. The Byrne program was
\ndesigned to encourage every federal grant recipient to help fight the War on Drugs. Millions
\nof dollars in federal aid have been offered to state and local law enforcement agencies willing to wage the war.
\nBy the late 1990s, the overwhelming majority of state and local police forces in the country
\nhad availed themselves of the newly available resources and added a significant military
\ncomponent to buttress their drug-war operations.
\n6
\nTEACHING THE NEW JIM CROW
\nLESSON 6
\nTOLERANCE.ORG
\n\u00a9 2010, 2012 BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEW PRESS.
\nWaging War
\nIn barely a decade, the War on Drugs went from being a political slogan to an actual war.
\nNow that police departments were suddenly flush with cash and military equipment earmarked for the drug war, they needed to make use of their new resources. [P]ara military
\nunits (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, teams) were quickly
\nformed in virtually every major city to fight the drug war.12
\nToday, the most common use of SWAT teams is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with
\nforced, unannounced entry into the home. In fact, in some jurisdictions drug warrants are
\nserved only by SWAT teams\u2014regardless of the nature of the alleged drug crime.
\nDrug raids conducted by SWAT teams are not polite encounters. In countless situations in
\nwhich police could easily have arrested someone or conducted a search without a militarystyle raid, police blast into people\u2019s homes, typically in the middle of the night, throwing
\ngrenades, shouting, and pointing guns and rifles at anyone inside, often including young
\nchildren. In recent years, dozens of people have been killed by police in the course of these
\nraids, including elderly grandparents and those who are completely innocent of any crime.
\nSWAT raids have not been limited to homes, apartment buildings, or public housing projects. Public high schools have been invaded by SWAT teams in search of drugs. In November 2003, for example, police raided Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina.
\nThe raid was recorded by the school\u2019s surveillance cameras as well as a police camera. The
\ntapes show students as young as fourteen forced to the ground in handcuffs as officers in
\nSWAT team uniforms and bulletproof vests aim guns at their heads and lead a drug-sniffing
\ndog to tear through their book bags. The raid was initiated by the school\u2019s principal, who
\nwas suspicious that a single student might be dealing marijuana. No drugs or weapons were
\nfound during the raid and no charges were filed. Nearly all of the students searched and
\nseized were students of color.
\nFinders Keepers
\nAs if the free military equipment, training, and cash grants were not enough, the Reagan
\nadministration provided law enforcement with yet another financial incentive to devote
\nextraordinary resources to drug law enforcement, rather than more serious crimes: state
\nand local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use,
\nthe vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war. This dramatic
\nchange in policy gave state and local police an enormous stake in the War on Drugs\u2014not in
\nits success, but in its perpetual existence.
\nSuddenly, police departments were capable of increasing the size of their budgets, quite
\nsubstantially, simply by taking the cash, cars, and homes of people suspected of drug use
\nor sales. Because those who were targeted were typically poor or of moderate means, they
\noften lacked the resources to hire an attorney or pay the considerable court costs. As a result, most people who had their cash or property seized did not challenge the government\u2019s
\naction, especially because the government could retaliate by filing criminal charges\u2014baseless or not.
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\n\u00a9 2010, 2012 BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEW PRESS.
\nTime Served
\nOnce convicted of felony drug charges, one\u2019s chances of being released from the system
\nin short order are slim, at best. The elimination of judicial discretion through mandatory sentencing laws has forced judges to impose sentences for drug crimes that are often
\nlonger than those violent criminals receive. When judges have discretion, they may consider a defendant\u2019s background and impose a lighter penalty if the defendant\u2019s personal
\ncircumstances\u2014extreme poverty or experience of abuse, for example\u2014warrant it. This
\nflexibility\u2014which is important in all criminal cases\u2014is especially important in drug cases,
\nas studies have indicated that many drug defendants are using or selling to support an addiction.13 Referring a defendant to treatment, rather than sending him or her to prison, may
\nwell be the most prudent choice\u2014saving government resources and potentially saving the
\ndefendant from a lifetime of addiction. Likewise, imposing a short prison sentence (or none
\nat all) may increase the chances that the defendant will experience successful re-entry. A
\nlengthy prison term may increase the odds that re-entry will be extremely difficult, leading
\nto relapse, and re-imprisonment
\n[I]n Harmelin v. Michigan, the Court upheld a sentence of life imprisonment for a defendant with no prior convictions who attempted to sell 672 grams (approximately 23 ounces)
\nof crack cocaine.14 This ruling was remarkable given that, prior to the Drug Reform Act of
\n1986, the longest sentence Congress had ever imposed for possession of any drug in any
\namount was one year. A life sentence for a first-time drug offense is unheard of in the rest of
\nthe developed world.
\nMandatory sentencing laws are frequently justified as necessary to keep \u201cviolent criminals\u201d
\noff the streets, yet those penalties are imposed most often against drug offenders and those
\nwho are guilty of nonviolent crimes. In fact, under the three-strikes regime in California, a
\n\u201crepeat offender\u201d could be someone who had only a single prior case decades ago, and one
\narrest can result in multiple strikes. For example, imagine a young man, eighteen years old,
\nwho is arrested as part of an undercover operation and charged with two counts of dealing
\ncocaine to minors. He had been selling to friends to earn extra money for shoes and basic
\nthings his mother could not afford. The prosecutor offers him probation if he agrees to
\nplead guilty to both charges and to snitch on a bigger dealer. Terrified of doing prison time,
\nhe takes the deal. Several years later, he finds his punishment will never end. Branded a felon, he is struggling to survive and to support his children. One night he burglarizes a corner
\nstore and steals food, toothpaste, Pepsi, and diapers for his baby boy. He is arrested almost
\nimmediately a few blocks away. That\u2019s it for him. He now has three strikes. His burglary can
\nbe charged as a third strike because of his two prior felony convictions. He is eligible for life
\nimprisonment. His children will be raised without a father.
\nThe Prison Label
\nOnce a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of citizenship such as
\nvoting and jury service are off-limits. It does not matter whether you have actually spent
\ntime in prison; your second-class citizenship begins the moment you are branded a felon.
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\n\u00a9 2010, 2012 BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEW PRESS.
\nMost people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison. As of 2008, there were
\napproximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, and a staggering 5.1 million people
\nunder \u201ccommunity correctional supervision\u201d\u2014i.e., on probation or parole.15
\nFor those released on probation or parole, the risks are especially high. They are subject to
\nregular surveillance and monitoring by the police and may be stopped and searched (with
\nor without their consent) for any reason or no reason at all. As a result, they are far more
\nlikely to be arrested (again) than those whose behavior is not subject to constant scrutiny
\nby law enforcement.
\nThe extraordinary increase in prison admissions due to parole and probation violations is
\ndue almost entirely to the War on Drugs. With respect to parole, in 1980, only 1 percent of
\nall prison admissions were parole violators. Twenty years later, more than one third (35
\npercent) of prison admissions resulted from parole violations.16 In this system of control,
\nfailing to cope well with one\u2019s exile status is treated like a crime. If you fail, after being
\nreleased from prison with a criminal record\u2014your personal badge of inferiority\u2014to remain
\ndrug free, or if you fail to get a job against all the odds, or if you get depressed and miss
\nan appointment with your parole officer (or if you cannot afford the bus fare to take you
\nthere), you can be sent right back to prison\u2014where society apparently thinks millions of
\nAmericans belong.
\nMost ultimately return to prison, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Others are released
\nagain, only to find themselves in precisely the circumstances they occupied before, unable
\nto cope with the stigma of the prison label and their permanent pariah status. Reducing the
\namount of time people spend behind bars\u2014by eliminating harsh mandatory minimums\u2014
\nwill alleviate some of the unnecessary suffering caused by this system, but it will not
\ndisturb the closed circuit. Those labeled felons will continue to cycle in and out of prison,
\nsubject to perpetual surveillance by the police, and unable to integrate into the mainstream
\nsociety and economy. Unless the number of people who are labeled felons is dramatically
\nreduced, and unless the laws and policies that keep ex-offenders marginalized from the
\nmainstream society and economy are eliminated, the system will continue to create and
\nmaintain an enormous undercaste.
\nEndnotes
\n1 Marc Mauer and Ryan King, A 25-Year Quagmire: The \u201cWar on Drugs\u201d and Its Impact on American Society (Washington, DC:
\nSentencing Project, 2007), 3.
\n2 Testimony of Marc Mauer, Executive Director of the Sentencing Project, Prepared for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, 111th Cong., Hearing on Unfairness in Federal Cocaine Sentencing: Is It Time
\nto Crack the 100 to 1 Disparity? May 21, 2009, 2.
\n3 Mauer and King, A 25-Year Quagmire, 2\u20133.
\n4 Ibid.; and Ryan King and Marc Mauer, The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990s (New
\nYork: Sentencing Project, 2005), documenting the dramatic increase in marijuana arrests. Marijuana is a relatively harmless drug.
\n9
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\nThe 1988 surgeon general\u2019s report lists tobacco as a more dangerous drug than marijuana, and Francis Young, an administrative
\nlaw judge for the Drug Enforcement Administration found there are no credible medical reports to suggest that consuming
\nmarijuana, in any dose, has ever caused a single death. U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, Opinion
\nand Recommended Ruling, Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Decision of Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young,
\nin the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition, Docket no. 86-22, Sept. 6, 1988, 56\u201357. By comparison, tobacco kills roughly
\n390,000 Americans annually, and alcohol is responsible for some 150,000 U.S. deaths a year. See Doug Bandow, \u201cWar on Drugs
\nor War on America?\u201d Stanford Law and Policy Review 3: 242, 245 (1991).
\n5 Pew Center on the States, One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections (Washington, DC: Pew Charitable Trusts,
\n2009).
\n6 Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30 (1968).
\n7 Ibid., Douglas J., dissenting.
\n8 See U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, Operations Pipeline and Convoy (Washington, DC,
\nn.d.), www.usdoj.gov\/dea\/programs\/ pipecon.htm.
\n9 State v. Rutherford, 93 Ohio App.3d 586, 593\u201395, 639 N.E. 2d 498, 503\u20134,
\nn. 3 (Ohio Ct. App. 1994).
\n10 Gary Webb, \u201cDriving While Black,\u201d Esquire, Apr. 1, 1999, 122.
\n11 Ibid.
\n12 Ibid., 8\u20139.
\n13 Christopher J. Mumola and Jennifer C. Karberg, Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006); and Ashley Nellis, Judy Greene, and Marc
\nMauer, Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers, 2d ed. (Washington,
\nDC: Sentencing Project, 2008), 8.
\n14 Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 967 (1991).
\n15 PEW Center for the States, One in 31.
\n16 Jeremy Travis, But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press,
\n2002), 32, citing Bureau of Justice Statistics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TEACH ING TOLERANCE A PROJECT OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER TOLERANCE.ORG TEACHING The New Jim Crow THE NEW JIM CROW by Michelle Alexander CHAPTER 2 The Lockdown We may\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7661,7664,7660,7665,7662,7663,7659],"tags":[7651,7656,7655,7658,7650,7654,7652,7657,7653],"class_list":["post-54951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-assignment-help-online-service-for-students-in-the-usa","category-australian-best-tutors","category-can-someone-write-my-assignment-for-me","category-do-my-essay-assignment","category-help-me-write-my-dissertation","category-homework-for-you","category-write-my-assignment-help-for-college-students","tag-ai-plagiarism-free-essay-writing-tool","tag-best-trans-tutors","tag-buy-essay-uk","tag-cheap-dissertation-writer","tag-help-with-writing-an-essay","tag-help-write-my-paper-ai-free","tag-online-essay-writers","tag-phd-essays","tag-write-my-essay-for-me"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essaybishops.com\/essays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}