http://www.drcnet.org/rapid/1997/12-5-1.html#alabama
A study conducted by the Birmingham Post-Herald newspaper shows that while blacks and whites charged with drug offenses stand an equal chance of being convicted in Alabama, black convicts are nearly twice as likely to receive jail time and nearly two and one half times as likely to receive prison terms of one year or more.
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/geneva/item6.htm
...As a result, although blacks constitute an estimated fifteen percent of all drug users ...blacks constitute 36 percent of arrests for drug possession and half of all arrests for drug selling.
... in seven states, ... blacks eligible for life sentences as repeat drug offenders were 5 times more likely to receive a life sentence than life-eligible whites and received 98 percent of all such life sentences.
Although the prevalence of both crack and powder cocaine use is higher among whites than African Americans (more than half of all crack cocaine users are white), 96 percent of those prosecuted for crack possession and facing the higher crack sentences are black or Latino
http://www.cjpf.org/Drug/outcomes2.html
roughly 36% of those arrested for drugs offenses are African-American, and roughly 59% of those convicted of those drug offenses are African-American. And of those convicted, African-Americans go to prison more frequently and for longer terms.
Human Rights Watch compared the rate of African-Americans going to prison for drug offenses to the rate of whites going to prison for drug offenses. Nation-wide the Black rates was 13 times the white rate using 1996 data from 37 states. On average, 482 of every 100,000 black men sentenced to prison are sent there on drug charges, compared with just 36 of every 100,000 white men. "More blacks were sent to state prison nationwide on drug charges than for crimes of violence," Jamie Fellner, associate counsel for Human Rights Watch, wrote in the report. "Only 27 percent of black admissions to prison were for crimes of violence – compared to 38 percent for drug offenses."
In Illinois, the Black rate was 57 times the white rate. This disparity has resulted in African- Americans dominating the prison populations in many states. African Americans are 90 percent of those who were incarcerated for selling or using drugs in Illinois and Maryland. In New Jersey, and four states in the South --- Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia --- blacks make up more than 80 percent of those in prison on drug convictions. The law enforcement focus on African-American drug suspects has resulted in 7 percent of all black people living in Texas and Oklahoma living behind bars.
... in 1998 there were 313,467 Black users of cocaine and 721,784 White users of cocaine over the age of 18 who used cocaine at least once in the past month (as measured in the 1998 Federal National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, released August 1999).
In October 1995, The Sentencing Project reported the now well-known statistic that one-in-three young black men is under correctional supervision or control (Marc Mauer and Tracy Huling, Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years Later, The Sentencing Project, 1995).
It is less well known that the American rate of incarceration is five to ten times that of most European nations -- but most of that extraordinarily high rate is due to the profoundly greater rates of incarceration of African-Americans, particularly drug defendants. The rate of white incarceration in the U.S. is only about 1.5 to 2 times greater than that of most developed nations. Nationally, blacks are incarcerated at a rate 8.14 times that of whites
On December 31, 1995 the number of white prisoners in Federal and State correctional institutions was 455,021, while the number of black prisoners was 544,005. On the same day, the number of whites on parole were 339,938 and the number of blacks was 299,721
http://www.212.net/crime/justice.htm
According to a 1994 report from the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice section...
Blacks, who comprise only 12% of the population and 13% of drug users, constitute some 35% of those arrested for drug possession, 55% of those convicted of possession, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for possession.
Yeah buddy!