Coalition Formed to Fight Drugs in the Black Community

Crisis, The, Jan/Feb 2005 by Utsey, Monica Z

Mandatory minimum sentences - laws that force judges to give a fixed sentence to those convicted of certain drug crimes - were enacted by Congress in 1986. The laws have since wreaked havoc on minority communities. In New York, for example, 93 percent of those imprisoned under the Rockefeller drug laws are Black and Latino. Nationwide, the number of women incarcerated under mandatory minimum sentences increased 421 percent between 1986 and 1996. The cost to taxpayers to house nonviolent offenders has been approximately $24 billion annually.

In October, the National African American Drug Policy Coalition (NAADPC), an organization of a dozen Black professional groups - including the National Bar Association and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation - was formed to seek alternatives to the mandatory minimum sentencing policies. NAADPC announced a five-year program to address drug abuse in the African American community through education, prevention and intervention.

"The coalition is trying to find alternatives to imprisonment," says Arthur L. Burnett Sr., a senior judge for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, who is now on leave serving as NAADPC's executive director.

"Moderate and long-term drug treatment will salvage more individuals' lives, reduce the number of people in prison and make more funds available for education, health needs and other functions of government."

The organization will work to persuade courts to see drug abuse as a health issue, expand the public health model of drug education and encourage prosecutors to agree to pretrial diversions, such as drug treatment.

Pilot programs will be established in: Baltimore; Chicago; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; Huntsville, Ala.; Flint, Mich.; and a city in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"It is an extremely important development that a new coalition of African American leaders is ready to provide leadership in the national debate on the need for 'smart on crime' policies, including judicial discretion in sentencing, treatment, drug courts and re-entry initiatives," says Laura M. Sager, executive director of Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Most recently the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that judges can now have a voice in the sentencing process based on an individual's circumstance.

"We wish to reduce significantly the number of African Americans being imprisoned and who are relegated to impoverished circumstances as a consequence thereof," says Burnett. NAADPC's ultimate goal, he says, is to make Black communities safer.

- Monica Z. Utsey

VERBATIM

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