Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch released a new report, Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs. Supporting its case with a plethora of Justice department data from the 1996 national Corrections Reporting Program (the latest version available), the report finds that drug penalties are disproportionately applied on the basis of race. In fact, "relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men," and in some states, the numbers are much higher, with blacks being sent to prison for comparable drug offenses at rates 20 to 57 times greater than that of whites. The hypertext table of contents makes access to any part of the report, including methodology, a click away.
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