babbage sentence for burglary in canada and in england is around 6 months in the us it's around a year and a half. in other developed countries a drug offense might land you a year a year and a half in jail in the us it's 5 to 10 years or more if you're a black man in america your sentence will be 20 percent longer and if you're a white man for the exact same crime i met a woman that had a 1st offense nothing more than. alice worth of crack cocaine and was sentenced to jail in 1979 and didn't come until 2014 and she said to me i don't know how to use the phone. i don't know how to send a text. i don't know i have an e-mail. people particularly black people were defined as the enemy in the war on drugs they were defined that way politically but also through media imagery crack cocaine epidemic is taking a new and dangerous turn white people brown people black people all use drugs and sell drugs at the same rate but if we look at who's serving time in america's prisons the law enforcement apparatus is deployed disproportionately against people of color look at them in the war on drugs al