Fed crack sentencing statistics show racial targeting rather than differential drug use

Evidence

If you set out intentionally to design racially discriminatory laws, you could not do much better. From 1986 to 1990, a congressional report showed that “both the rate and the average length of imprisonment for federal offenders increased for Blacks in comparison to Whites.” What’s more, it concluded, the increase was largely due to the mandatory minimums applied to crack versus powder cocaine cases. According to the US Sentencing Commission, black Americans “accounted for 88.3 percent of federal crack cocaine distribution convictions in 1993, and [w]hites 4.1 percent.” Does that statistic mean black Americans were more likely to deal drugs than white Americans? Or were they just more likely to get caught while dealing drugs? — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 413

Categorization

• QUESTION: The closing rhetorical question is the crux of the entire chapter’s causal argument — worth pressing analytically rather than rhetorically in a legal defense: what evidence separates ‘more likely to deal’ from ‘more likely to get caught’?
• XREF: connects to: Crack cocaine sentencing disparity is racially discriminatory in practice — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1231