NYC's Racially Skewed Pot Arrests

Marijuana arrests have spiked in New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, according to new research from a Queens College professor, and the people arrested for pot are almost exclusively minorities.

Bloomberg, who once told New York magazine that he smoked pot "and enjoyed it," has quietly continued the 'broken-windows' practices of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and has seriously stepped up marijuana arrests. In 2008 alone, more than 40,000 people were arrested in New York for low-level marijuana offenses -- and 87 percent of them were black of Latino. When you consider that white people are more likely to use pot than African Americans, the problem here becomes even clearer.

New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer wrote about these numbers this week, drawing from the research of Queens College sociology professor Harry Levine. Dwyer finds that the city explains the discrepancy away through a reliance on the broken windows theory, which is alive and well in NYC.

“Marijuana arrests — which rarely lead to jail — are concentrated in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of violent crime because that’s where the police focus their attention in order to reduce victimization,” Bloomberg's criminal justice aide John Feinblatt told Dwyer.

Like so many aspects of the War on Drugs, New York's attempt to fix this problem by focusing on low-level offenders has backfired. By enforcing marijuana laws in certain parts of the city, we end up with not only increased minority contact with the system, but almost exclusive minority contact. Arrests also aren't harmless just because they don't lead to jail. They lead to missed workdays and missed family opportunities, they lead to growing rap sheets and prohibitive fines. They lead to resentment of police, which hurts public safety.

The Bloomberg administration seems to bring common-sense approaches to so many of New York's trickiest problems. But when it comes to pot, Mike's blowing it.

Image: Prof. Harry Levine