From one of the following quotes, choose one and elaborate on the quotes. The quotes are from the New Jim Crow.

Question

1. Few legal rules meaningfully constrain the police in the War on Drugs. This may sound like an overstatement, but upon examination it proves accurate. The absence of significant constraints on the exercise of police discretion is a key feature of the drug war's design. It has made the roundup of millions of Americans for nonviolent drug offenses relatively easy (61).
2. Anyone driving more than a few blocks is likely to commit a traffic violation of some kind, such as failing to track properly between lanes, failing to stop at precisely the correct distance behind a crosswalk, failing to pause for precisely the right amount of time at a stop sign, or failing to use a turn signal at the appropriate distance from an intersection. Allowing the police to use minor traffic violations as a pretext for baseless drug investigations would permit them to single out anyone for a drug investigation without any evidence of illegal drug activity whatsoever. That kind of arbitrary police conduct is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was intended to prohibit (67).
3. As legal scholar David Cole has observed, “in practice, the drug-courier profile is a scattershot hodgepodge of traits and characteristics so expansive that it potentially justifies stopping anybody and everybody.” The profile can include traveling with luggage, traveling without luggage, driving an expensive car, driving a car that needs repairs, driving with out-of-state license plates, driving a rental car, driving with “mismatched occupants,” acting too calm, acting too nervous, dressing casually, wearing expensive clothing or jewelry, being one of the first to deplane, being one of the last to deplane, deplaning in the middle, paying for a ticket in cash, using large-denomination currency, using small-denomination currency, traveling alone, traveling with a companion, and so on (71).
4. Property or cash could be seized based on mere suspicion of illegal drug activity, and the seizure could occur without notice or hearing, upon an ex parte showing of mere probable cause to believe that the property had somehow been “involved” in a crime. The probable cause showing could be based on nothing more than hearsay, innuendo, or even the paid, self-serving testimony of someone with interests clearly adverse to the property owner (79).

Answer 1

1. Few legal rules meaningfully constrain the police in the War on Drugs. This may sound like an overstatement, but upon examination it proves accurate. The absence of significant constraints on the exercise of police discretion is a key feature of the drug war's design. It has made the roundup of millions of Americans for nonviolent drug offenses relatively easy (61).

The lack of policies and procedures surrounding police officer's discretion when interacting with nonviolent drug offenders results in millions of people being imprisoned rather than rehabilitated or free. Every time an individual is imprisoned for any offense, their lives and their families lives are subsequently impacted, almost always in a negative fashion. A lack of police discretion and a lack of legal protections against police overuse of power means that millions of people are being cycled through the United States prison system for relatively minor offenses, where oftentimes, comprehensive treatment and rehabilitation, rather than prison, would break the cycle of drug use. While the War on Drugs' supposed aim is to minimize drug use and drug distribution, the overuse of the police's ability to imprison citizens results in underprivileged communities, oftentimes communities of color, being at a further disadvantage as the mass incarceration of people from these communities promotes cyclical poverty and broken family units.