Page 47 - Middle Georgia State University - Knighted 2019

observed in a study conducted throughout seven states in 2000, nearly three decades after the
conception of the “War on Drugs,” indicating that 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders in
prison were of African-American descent (Fort 48).

New legislation, specifically the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, imposed new
minimum sentences and harsher punishments for petty drug offenses (Alexander 53). The
Anti-Drug Abuse Act targeted African Americans by applying equal punishments for “the
sale of five grams of crack cocaine, associated with blacks, and the sale of 500 grams of
powder cocaine, associated with whites.” (Graff 124). This racial targeting can be observed
through statistics indicating that 80 percent of people convicted under the Anti-Drug Abuse
Act are African-American, despite African-Americans composing only a marginal percentage
of all crack cocaine users (Nadelmann 23).

A notable consequence of the “War on Drugs” is an increase in privatized prisons and
their populations. Lichtenstein observes the nearly ten times increase of inmates since the
1970s, and recognizes it as a direct result of the “War on Drugs” (Lichtenstein, “Flocatex”
115). Additionally, the number of beds in private prisons increased from 70,000 in the 1990s
to 128,000 in 2010 (Lichtenstein, “Flocatex” 121).

Much like the convict-lease system, one of the prison-industrial complex’s main
purposes is to mitigate cost. States use the prison-industrial complex as a means to eliminate
cost and stimulate the economy through “the neoprivatization of corrections” (Lichtenstein,
“Flocatex” 120). Lichtenstein describes in depth how “states pass the laws, appropriate most
of the resources…[and] lease the facilities to private contractors” (“Flocatex” 115). This
system operates under the assumption that the private sector is more financially efficient.

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