RACE AND THE ENFORCEMENT OF DRUG DELIVERY LAWS IN ...

esearchers found that rates of drug-selling were 1.9 times higher among black
youth than white youth, but that referral rates (treated in this study as analogous
to arrest) for that same behavior were 18.8 times higher for black than white
youth. The results of the DOJ study indicate that race differences in rates of drug
selling explain approximately 10 percent of the large disparity between black and
white drug arrest rates for Seattle youth, indicating that the vast majority of the
observed racial disparity in those drug sales arrests was largely a function of
enforcement practices rather than racial differences in offense rates.
Similarly, prior research by the author of this report and affiliated researchers
found that blacks were significantly over-represented among those arrested
between 1999 and 2001 in Seattle for drug possession 26 and drug delivery 27
relative to those who use and deliver illegal drugs in Seattle. Key findings from
these studies include the following:
• In Seattle, a majority of users of serious drugs, with the possible exception
of crack cocaine, are white.
• The majority of needle exchangers surveyed in Seattle obtained their
drugs (primarily heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine) from a white
person. Much smaller percentages reported obtaining those substances
from a black person.
• 64.2 percent of those purposefully arrested 28 for delivery of serious drugs,
including heroin, methamphetamine, powder cocaine, crack cocaine and
ecstasy, in Seattle from January 1999 to April 2001 were black.
David Hawkins, Kenyatta Etchison, and James Herbert Williams. The data for this study were
drawn from “a prospective longitudinal survey of 808 children who consented to participate in
the study, drawn from the population of 1,053 fifth-grade students attending 18 elementary
schools serving high-crime and other neighborhoods of Seattle in the fall of 1985 . . . Slightly
less than half identified themselves as European-American (47 percent), about one-fourth (26
percent) as African American, 22 percent as Asian American, and 5 percent as Native
American. Five percent of the sample was Hispanic” (Appendix A, p. A51). Although the average
family income level of those included in the study was generally low, rates of poverty were
significantly higher among African American participants: 75.4 percent of the African American
youth were eligible for the free lunch program, compared with only 31.2 percent of the
Caucasian youth. Self-report information was collected from age 11 to age 17 for eight types of
offenses, one of which is drug sales. Survey response rates were very high; 94 percent of the
youths were interviewed at age 17. According to the authors of the report, most referrals to the
juvenile court for criminal offenses followed arrests by the police.
26 Beckett, Nyrop, Pfingst and Bowen 2005.
27
Beckett 2004; Beckett 2004; Beckett, Nyrop and Pfingst 2006.
28 In the previous study, “purposeful” arrests included those that resulted from buy-busts,
reverse buy-busts, and narcotics search warrants; “serious drugs” included heroin, crack
11