Critical Evaluation
The so called “War on Drugs”, catalyzed by the emergence of crack cocaine, resulted in the mass incarceration of nearly one million individuals in the years between 1980 to 1996. In the decades following Ronald Reagan’s actions on substance abuse, communities around the United States experienced a dramatic increase in illegal drug persecution. However, the effects of the drug war were not felt evenly, as communities of ethnic and racial minorities suffered the worst of the war. As stated towards the beginning of the article, drug arrests among Blacks increased by 2,257 per 100,00 population versus the 113 arrestee increase per 100,000 population in Whites. It had seemed that the movement to end substance abuse led to the …show more content…
Some of the data provided can be provocative to some people. For example, some people may argue that only Blacks and Latinos are victims of the “War on Drugs”. However, as shown in the article, poor whites are also overrepresented when it comes to injecting drugs such as meth. It was also interesting to note that the means to collect data in Seattle were flawed in the sense that certain people, such as upper and middle class individuals and users of marijuana and crack cocaine were excluded from data collections such as the ones from TARGET and the Seattle Needle Exchange …show more content…
It clearly relates to the class theme of how certain crimes are handled, and how those actions handling crimes are distributed among different populations. Another way this relates to major themes is how certain races and individuals are targeted more than others as shown by the z-score results that the authors made. t is crucial to understand the research behind the data. As shown by sources such as TARGET and the Seattle Needle Exchange, some categories of people can be excluded from the entire data collection itself. Because of this, it is important to interpret the data correctly rather than just assuming by what the data says. It is also important to consider some of the reasons that individuals of color may be more pre-disposed to getting arrested for illicit drug use. As stated previously, inaccessibility to private space and the lower the opportunities to better ones’ life are big contributors to the use of illegal drugs and the arrests made on said
The so called “War on Drugs”, catalyzed by the emergence of crack cocaine, resulted in the mass incarceration of nearly one million individuals in the years between 1980 to 1996. In the decades following Ronald Reagan’s actions on substance abuse, communities around the United States experienced a dramatic increase in illegal drug persecution. However, the effects of the drug war were not felt evenly, as communities of ethnic and racial minorities suffered the worst of the war. As stated towards the beginning of the article, drug arrests among Blacks increased by 2,257 per 100,00 population versus the 113 arrestee increase per 100,000 population in Whites. It had seemed that the movement to end substance abuse led to the …show more content…
Some of the data provided can be provocative to some people. For example, some people may argue that only Blacks and Latinos are victims of the “War on Drugs”. However, as shown in the article, poor whites are also overrepresented when it comes to injecting drugs such as meth. It was also interesting to note that the means to collect data in Seattle were flawed in the sense that certain people, such as upper and middle class individuals and users of marijuana and crack cocaine were excluded from data collections such as the ones from TARGET and the Seattle Needle Exchange …show more content…
It clearly relates to the class theme of how certain crimes are handled, and how those actions handling crimes are distributed among different populations. Another way this relates to major themes is how certain races and individuals are targeted more than others as shown by the z-score results that the authors made. t is crucial to understand the research behind the data. As shown by sources such as TARGET and the Seattle Needle Exchange, some categories of people can be excluded from the entire data collection itself. Because of this, it is important to interpret the data correctly rather than just assuming by what the data says. It is also important to consider some of the reasons that individuals of color may be more pre-disposed to getting arrested for illicit drug use. As stated previously, inaccessibility to private space and the lower the opportunities to better ones’ life are big contributors to the use of illegal drugs and the arrests made on said