A generation ago when civil rights activists denounced as racist the push to punish crack-cocaine crimes, largely involving blacks, far more severely than powder-cocaine crimes, involving whites, political figures of both parties staunchly defended those policies as necessary to control violent crime.
But today, with heroin ravaging largely white communities in New England, the Northeast and the Midwest, and with violent crime largely down, the mood is more forgiving.
Both the image and reality is that this is a white and often middle-class problem, said Mr. Mauer of the Sentencing Project. And appropriately so, were having a much broader conversation about prevention and treatment, and trying to be constructive in responding to this problem. This is good. I dont think we should lock up white kids to show were being equal.