If you're arrested for drugs, you're more likely to get a second chance if you're white - Metro - cleveland.com: These cases are among hundreds examined by The Plain Dealer in an effort to gauge whether white defendants get different treatment than black defendants in the criminal justice system. The newspaper focused specifically on drug cases, which not only dominate local court dockets but also are characterized far more than most violent or property crimes by judgment calls and policy decisions at virtually every level of the system.
The analysis was done against a national backdrop of questions about the racial justice of America's decades-long reliance on law enforcement to stamp out drug abuse.
Two reform-minded organizations -- The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch -- made essentially the same case in separate studies earlier this year.
Despite data consistently showing that far more white people use crack cocaine, powder cocaine and other illegal drugs than black people, both groups noted, it is black people who overwhelmingly dominate the ranks of those who are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for drugs.
Cleveland -- where records show a black person is nearly four times more likely to be arrested on felony drug charges than a white person -- is no exception.
And since 2000, a black person has been 12.7 times more likely than a white person to be sent to a state prison from Cuyahoga County on drug charges.
