According to a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.), data drawn from police records from all 50 states and the District of Columbia suggest that black and white Americans use marijuana at about the same rate, but blacks are nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession. Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that racial gaps may be driven in part by federal funding policies that encourage law enforcement to meet numerical arrest goals. According to Dr. Goff, the desire to increase federal funding by increasing arrest statistics may lead police departments to concentrate on minority or poorer neighborhoods and low-level drug offenses that are easier and cheaper to investigate than serious felony crimes. To read more, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/us/marijuana-arrests-four-times-as-likely-for-blacks.html and http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/04/us/racial-disparity-in-arrests.html?_r=0
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