Confessions of a Drug War Veteran

The War on Drugs helped to promote mass incarceration and has been one of the single most destructive forces to hit the black family since slavery.

The latest statistical analysis by the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows black men represent over 56% of the incarcerated males in the United States, that’s over 500,000 men. With the leading cause of incarceration being non-violent drug offenses; experts have said poor individuals have a one (1) in three (3) chance of escaping poverty in any given year. Higher education levels improve the likelihood of leaving poverty, yet graduation levels are reduced by children’s inability to “trust” that education will help them to escape their current impoverished conditions. Often times black children (boys especially) have witnessed brothers, fathers, and uncles leave school, engage in illegal activities, and go to prison.

This trend becomes the norm and is incorporated into the thinking, feelings, and actions of these impressionable children. We see a growing number of disconnected youth with limited economic prospects as they attend poor schools and return home to poor neighborhoods to be force fed into a continuing cycle of social and economic isolation that leads to the belief that incarceration is a “rite of passage”. This continued practice ensures we lose valuable social capital and human resources in our communities.

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