Race, Class, and Drugs

The recent focus on crack has less to do with race than with class. The market for cocaine, like many other markets, tends to segment into upscale and downscale markets. Downscale markets tend to be much easier for the police to penetrate than upscale markets. Inaddition, the social harmsfrom consensual crime tend to be concentrated where the downscale markets are-inpoor urban neighborhoods. As a result, police and prosecutors tend to focus their attention not on drug crime generally, but on certain kinds of drug crime in certain kinds of neighborhoods. This enforcement strategy, in turn, tends naturally to produce racial or ethnic "tilts," since poor urban neighborhoods are so often segregated along racial or ethnic lines.Though this kind of enforcement stragegy is understandable, it is likely to fail. Differential enforcement breeds resentment, which undermines the law's normative force. To succeed, drug enforcement needs to become more self-consciously egalitarian.