The findings in "Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs" are based on U.S. government statistics. Among other proposals, HRW calls for the repeal of mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenders, improvement in drug-abuse treatment, alternative sanctions and an end to racial profiling.

The popular perception is that African-Americans are America's greatest drug offenders. But whites use illegal narcotics at a rate five times that among African-Americans. Yet blacks are far more often arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses. In the 10 states with the largest disparities (including New Jersey), blacks are jailed for illegal drug offenses up to 57 times more often than whites. Their numbers have swollen America's penal institutions at an alarming rate.

According to HRW executive director Ken Roth, black and white drug offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice system. Such differences, he said, are "not only profoundly unfair to blacks, they also corrode the American ideal of equal justice for all."

In 1996, the most recent year for which complete statistics were available, blacks constituted 62.6 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons. Whites represented 36.7 percent, according to HRW, which analyzed prison admissions in 37 states based on data gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the Department of Justice.

Blacks have long been aware of their unfair treatment by local police and other law enforcement agencies that send them to jail in numbers far greater than others who violate U.S. drug laws.

Jimmy Johnston, a former drug user who was born in Trenton, N.J., 29 years ago, put it this way: "Look, I was out in the streets of Trenton, Newark and New York City for 11 years. I know what went on. Nobody can tell me that it's mainly blacks involved in drugs. Whites are even more involved. They use and handle far more narcotics than we ever thought of using.

"But they don't get busted in the same way African-Americans do. The cops stayed on us. They watched every move. But with whites, the whole attitude is different. They move a lot of stuff, and a lot of times the cops either look the other way or concentrate on us so much that the white guys who commit the same offenses are sometimes ignored."

Johnson is well aware that blacks are often sent to jail while whites who commit the same offenses stay home. "I don't have to read a report," he insisted in a telephone interview. "I was on the scene and I know what goes down."

Johnson's views jibe with the HRW report that said, "In poor black neighborhoods, drug transactions are more likely to be conducted on the streets, in public and between strangers." By contrast, in white neighborhoods -- working-class through upper-class -- drugs are more likely to be sold indoors, in bars, clubs and private homes. It's easier and costs less for police to target minority neighborhoods because drug transactions are generally more visible.

The result: Prisons throughout the United States are overcrowded with African-American inmates. The implications are far more ominous than unfair treatment of black drug offenders alone.

Jimmy Johnson was right when he pointed out that it is "not logical that the only abuse of blacks by the U.S. Justice Department involves drug arrests. They use racial profiling to lock up African-Americans for all sorts of criminal activities. We're supposed to be treated just like others under the law. But we're not."

HRW used the government's own data to issue a report that largely substantiates what African-Americans have experienced for generations. It amounts to a denial of equal protection under the law as provided by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Lewis is a retired columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The question that's left is whether the government will do anything about such blatant abuses or simply allow them to continue

Lewis is a retired columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Copyright 2000 Contra Costa Times

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