Do blacks in the US get arrested more often for drug usage despite using drugs at the same rate as whites?

Question

Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk says in this YouTube video that

The studies show that as well. Blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate but black people get arrested way more often for it.

Is it true that the proportions of black and white drug users are (approximately) the same in the USA, but the arrest rates there are (significantly or disproportionately) higher for black drug users than white drug users?

score 93 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 06 '17 at 14:54

93

A similar claim is often made, but limited to the use of marijuana. For that, the Washington Post has a good overview. The results for overall drug use are similar to those results.

Drug use by race/ethnicity

The dataset that is used most often to evaluate claims like this is the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

You can view the data here for 2011.

You can view a table showing data from 2012 here.

Basically, while white people tend to try drugs in higher numbers, looking at the "past month" value, it can be seen that black people do drugs in slightly higher numbers.

The same can be seen when looking at the number of days in the last month that Marijuana was consumed (the graph is generated from the 2011 data set):

Since some are cropped, the data labels are: (1) White, (2) Black/African American, (3) Native American/Alaskan Native, (4) Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, (5) Asian, (6) More than one race, (7) Hispanic.

This is a trend that can be seen over the years:

Arrests for drug offenses by race

slate.com and politifact.com have created a graph from data from the BJS:

politifact states:

[T]he National Research Council report says, "In recent years, drug-related arrest rates for blacks have been three to four times higher than those for whites. In the late 1980s, the rates were six times higher for blacks than for whites."

Human Rights Watch says:

In every year from 1980 to 2007, blacks were arrested nationwide on drug charges at rates relative to population that were 2.8 to 5.5 times higher than white arrest rates.

Disparity between drug use and drug arrests

The above data shows that while black people do marginally more drugs, they are arrested disproportionately more often than white people.

politifact looked at a similar claim and concludes:

[...] African-Americans don't use drugs at a higher level than whites but wind up going to prison six times more. [...] We rate his claim Mostly True.

edited Apr 06 '17 at 14:54

Yisela

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answered Jan 19 '17 at 10:16

tim

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Good post, but what a horrible first graphic you quoted. No clue what the 3rd, 4th, and 6th bars represent… – gerrit Jan 19 '17 at 11:52
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@gerrit visiting the stats page linked tells me that 3 is "Native American/Alaskan", 4 is "Native Hawaiian/Other" and 6 is "More than one race" – Jamiec Jan 19 '17 at 12:08
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@gerrit true, it's because the graphics are automatically generated. I didn't change it as only the first two bars are relevant to the question. You can recreate the graph and also see the numbers [here](http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quickconfig.do?datasetKey=34481-0001_all). – tim Jan 19 '17 at 12:23
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Surely since *illegal* drug use is studied, these number are likely an underestimate? It's not like people are going to admit they do something illegal. Also, some races/communities may be better at hiding their drug use than others. I'm not disputing your answer - 6x is significant - my point is that drug use and racial bias and poverty are all linked and it's a very complicated knot to untie and make sense of. – Jan 19 '17 at 13:05
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I guess for comparison with a survey on "Drug use", one should not count offenses related to sale or manufacturing. Looking at https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.cfm# the big picture, however, is the same when using the "Possession-subTotal" category. – TheEspinosa Jan 19 '17 at 13:15
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Probably an ignorant question, but why the dramatic increase in arrest rate between 1980-1990? – user812786 Jan 19 '17 at 15:37
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I noticed the drug use graphs are both percent based, but the arrest graph changes to actual numbers. I'm not super familiar with the percentage makeup of the races of people in America, but it seems like adjusting the percentages to numbers or vice versa would improve this answer. It's also not clear where the 3rd, 4th, and 6th bars from the first graph would get distributed, and since they seem to have the highest percentages, it could skew the results in whatever direction you care to argue for. – David Starkey Jan 19 '17 at 15:52
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@DavidStarkey Actually it changes from per hundred ("percent") to per hundred-thousand. It's the same sort of number, just a different zoom level. – Kevin Fee Jan 19 '17 at 15:55
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@whrrgarbl Because of the [war on drugs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Arrests_and_incarceration). While it started under Nixon, arrests didn't dramatically increase until the 80s under Reagan. – tim Jan 19 '17 at 15:58
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Regarding the 1980s: see https://www.google.com/search?q=war+on+drugs+reagan – Foo Bar Jan 19 '17 at 16:05
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Good answer but in the second graph, there is no mention of the confidence intervals for this statistic on each subset group. I would expect that this would be smaller for the 'white' group than any other. So it's possible that the difference between 'white' and 'black' is within the range of error. One clue that this might be the case is that the data is far more volatile for 'black' than 'white'. – JimmyJames Jan 19 '17 at 16:11
@FooBar ahh of course! Thanks, guess I should have scrolled down a bit more on [the wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Arrests_and_incarceration). – user812786 Jan 19 '17 at 16:47
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I would love to see how this stacks up against SES data. I wonder if poor whites are still that much less likely to go to jail. – Jared Smith Jan 19 '17 at 16:58
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@whrrgarbl I also believe that that was around the time of the crack epidemic as well, but I don't have any data right now on that. – Jake Jan 19 '17 at 17:32
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What exactly is the definition of "drug-related arrest"? Does it only include use/sale/posession, or does it also include other crimes done to pay the drugs? – PlasmaHH Jan 19 '17 at 19:48
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Given that all the usage data is based on self-reporting, and that the usage percentages are hilariously, inaccurately low, it's hard to credit those numbers. – DCShannon Jan 19 '17 at 21:51
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@DCShannon: The usage percentages are not "hilariously, inaccurately low" based on the people I hang out with (in my opinion). I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have some reference to back up your claim? – James Jan 19 '17 at 22:18
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@James I recall seeing a number of studies over the years with higher numbers, and it should be obvious that there's a lot of underreporting of using something that's illegal. A quick search turned up [this article](https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-scope-marijuana-use-in-united-states) showing usage in the past year among high school students, with over 40% of 12th graders admitting to having smoked at least once in the past year. I live near Denver, so my experience may not be typical, but I expect the *majority* to have used marijuana in the past year. – DCShannon Jan 19 '17 at 22:26
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@DCShannon: Fair enough. My demographic is middle-aged mostly white suburbia. I admit that most of my friends probably wouldn't tell me if they DID do drugs. – James Jan 20 '17 at 00:10
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@tim Since the BJS statistics you use is for all drug offenses (not just drug use), you are actually not answering the question. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Jan 20 '17 at 02:23
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When comparing drug use by race (in Germany we actually cringe when we hear that -- what has skin color or nose shape to do with it !?); however, when we do that, we have to control for age and socio-economic status. Young male adults do more drugs. Poor, unemployed, uneducated singles probably do more drugs than educated, employed, well-off parents. Statisticians face similar problems when comparing general crime rates. I suspect that some of the "race" differences are in fact differences in the population and status. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Jan 20 '17 at 12:02
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@PeterA.Schneider I alluded to that with my comment, but note that the potential confounding does not preclude discrimination: if African-Americans are more likely than their Caucasian counterparts to be unwed, unemployed/under-employed, etc. then the locus of the problem has only been shifted to the economic disparity rather than the criminal justice system. – Jared Smith Jan 20 '17 at 12:36
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@JaredSmith It's important to get the root cause of (indeed existing) racial imbalances right because it's easy to fall into the cognitive "race xy is stupid/violent/lazy/criminal/you name it trap. Before we start a discussion we want a proper factual base. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Jan 20 '17 at 12:42
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I wish I could downvote this 100 times. You are looking at drug use not who is selling the drugs and committing violent acts while using drugs. Those are the people cops arrest. Cops do not have time to arrest "drug users". You need to have a semblance of understanding something before you just research it. – blankip Jan 20 '17 at 19:33
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@blankip I agree 100%. I tried to point that out already yesterday in a comment, but noone seems to read so far down in the comment thread. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Jan 20 '17 at 19:53
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@blankip can you show evidence of this claim? – JimmyJames Jan 20 '17 at 19:53
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@JimmyJames Evidence of what? This answer does not contain any data about arrests of drug users and that is what the question is about. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Jan 20 '17 at 19:55
Is the raw data used to construct that first graph available somewhere? I'd like to use it to reframe the graph to show how people can fudge data visualization to fit a hypothesis. – Cruncher Jan 20 '17 at 19:56
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@Tor-EinarJarnbjo That cops don't arrest "drug users". I know people arrested for simple possession and in my experience, the race of the person was a good predictor of whether they were given probation or jail time. That's anecdotal but it contradicts the statement made. – JimmyJames Jan 20 '17 at 19:57
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@JimmyJames Ok, I can agree on that, but the point is that the numbers used in this answer would only relate to the question if the only drug offenders arrested were the users and not the producers, distributors or dealers. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Jan 20 '17 at 20:00
@Tor-EinarJarnbjo It's a fair point. It's unclear what those numbers show. Another complicating factor is that quantity/weight alone is considered proof of intent to distribute and those limits are not terribly large. – JimmyJames Jan 20 '17 at 20:04
Is there data for drug distribution statistics by race? Cops tend to go for distribution, not use, I wonder if the disproportion is due to arrests for distro over usage / simple possession. – durron597 Jan 20 '17 at 21:07
@JimmyJames - I don't need to its common sense. If I wanted to research an answer I would. This answer is info for maybe 20-30% of drug arrests. Also it has no indicators of severity of the arrest - possession is usually a misdemeanor like a traffic ticket. – blankip Jan 20 '17 at 21:13
Wow. The "war on drugs" didn't affect white people much :( – Django Reinhardt Jan 21 '17 at 00:26
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@DCShannon Because we're talking about difference here, the amount of underreporting is irrelevant as long as it's consistent among races. Unless you have source that whites underreport more than blacks, I assume the amount of underreporting is same, thus the proportion of drug users remain: 300-400% more arrests for 10-15% more users. – Agent_L Jan 21 '17 at 16:20
@Agent_L As you pointed out in your comment, you're just making assumptions. Additional assumptions don't make the data more reliable. To be clear, I'm just pointing out that the data for the first graph doesn't seem very useful. Clearly there's *something* going on with the data in the last graph, but I just don't think we have good evidence regarding usage rates to make that comparison. – DCShannon Jan 24 '17 at 18:21
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@DCShannon You've rejected the data entirely just because it shows something else than you've expected. I don't think your assumption and my assumption are even on same level. – Agent_L Jan 25 '17 at 10:40
@Agent_L Saying the data is suspect and we shouldn't draw conclusions from it is different than saying it is definitely wrong. I have reason to believe it might be wrong, and very little to think it is right. This is *skeptics* SE after all. – DCShannon Jan 25 '17 at 18:31
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"I don't need to its common sense. If I wanted to research an answer I would." (blankip) Well, then, why research when the answer is right there, in your large intestine? – PoloHoleSet Apr 06 '17 at 15:50

Do blacks in the US get arrested more often for drug usage despite using drugs at the same rate as whites?

1 Answers1

Drug use by race/ethnicity

Arrests for drug offenses by race

Disparity between drug use and drug arrests