Clancy > Recent Status Updates

This is one of the dozen racial profiling studies listed:

“In Volusia County, Florida, a reporter obtained 148 hours of video footage documenting more than 1,000 highway stops conducted by state troopers. Only 5% of the drivers on the road were African American or Latino, but more than 80% of the people stopped and searched were minorities.” (Pg 132)

“One study involved a video game that showed photos of white & black men holding either a gun or other object (wallet, phone). Participants were told to decide as quickly as possible whether to shoot the target. Participants were more likely to mistake a black target as armed when he was not, and mistake a white target as unarmed, when he in fact was armed- reflecting unconscious thought process.” (Pg 104)

“Even Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has condemned the harsh mandatory minimum sentences imposed on drug offenders. He told attorneys (...), “Our [prison]resources are misspent, our punishments too severs, our sentences too loaded. I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimums sentences.”

“In 1972, there were just a few hundred paramilitary drug raids per year in the Unites States. By the early 1980s, there were three thousand annual SWAT deployments, by 1996 there were thirty thousand, and by 2001 there were forty thousand.” (Pg 74)

This book is very good, but I have to read it more in the mindset of a text book and less a casual summer read. Going to commit to a section every day and share a quote.

“At the time he (Reagan) declared this new war (on drugs), less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation.” (Pg 49)