Revisiting Louisiana Drug Interdiction: Drug Profiling in the Louisiana Justice System

Abstract

Drug profiling by the Louisiana State Police Criminal Patrol Unit (LSP-CPU) and the deputies of the St Martin Parish Sheriff's Office (SMSO) has been through in-depth analyses by Ruiz (2000) and colleagues (Bowling, Ruiz, & Staub, 2008; Ruiz & Woessner, 2006). Ruiz's essential findings support allegations of demographic profiling in traffic arrests on Louisiana's Interstate-10. Also, Ruiz suggested that the most plausible explanation was attributed to the war on drugs specified by Louisiana's asset forfeiture procedure. Assuming that a similar pattern would exist in the St. Martin Parish justice system, the present study examines the court dispositions that were followed by drug interdiction in Bowling et al. (2008), Ruiz (2000) and Ruiz and Woessner (2006). This study also endeavours to discover more evidence regarding the relationship between the asset forfeiture policy and drug interdiction by the Louisiana justice system. The drug arrest records from 1988 to 1994 that were prepared by the SMSO and the LSP-CPU officers and collected by Ruiz were analysed, focusing on court dispositions.

Keywords

drug profiling drug interdiction Louisiana asset forfeiture drug policies

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aguirre

(2004). Profiling Mexican American identity: Issues and concerns. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(7), 928–942.

Bowling

Ruiz

Staub

(2008). Drug profiling in Louisiana: Ten years later. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 10(3), 222–237.

Gibson

J. L.

(1978). Race as a determinant of criminal sentences: A methodological critique and case study. Law and Society Review, 12(3), 455–478.

Hembroff

L. A.

Martin

M. W.

Sell

(1981). Total performance inconsistency and status generalization: An expectation states formulation. Sociological Quarterly, 22(3), 421–430.

Louisiana State Police. (2004). Louisiana state police-2004 annual report. Louisiana State Police Public Affairs Section. Retrieved August 26, 2007, from http://www.lsp.org/stats.html.

Minnesota House of Representatives. (2000). Racial profiling studies in law enforcement: Issues and methodology. St. Paul, MN: Research Department.

Prejean

A. J.

(1999). Ethics and self-funding police budgets: The Louisiana drug asset forfeiture law. Global Virtue Ethics, 1(3). Retrieved July 4, 2007, from http://www.spaef.com/GVER_PUB/v1n3_prejean.html.

Ruiz

J. M.

(2000). Drug profiling Cajun style: Drug interdiction stops on Interstate 10 by the Louisiana State Police and deputies of the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Department (Doctoral dissertation, Sam Houston State University, 2000).

Ruiz

Woessner

(2006). Profiling, Cajun style: Racial and demographic profiling in Louisiana's war on drugs. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 8(3), 176–197.

10.

Steffensmeier

Kramer

Streifel

(1993). Gender and imprisonment decisions. Criminology, 31(3), 411–446.

11.

Stellwagen

L. D.

Wylie

K. A.

(1985). Strategies for supplementing the police budget. Washington, DC: US National Institute of Justice.

12.

Tyler

T. R.

Huo

Y. J.

(2002). Trust in the law: Encouraging public cooperation with the police and courts. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

13.

Unnever

J. D.

Hembroff

L. A.

(1988). The prediction of racial/ethnic sentencing disparities: An expectation states approach. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 25(1), 53–82.

14.

Worrall

J. L.

(2001). Addicted to the drug war: The role of civil asset forfeiture as a budgetary necessity in contemporary law enforcement. Journal of Criminal Justice, 29(3), 171–187.

15.

Zalman

(1996). Judges in their own case: A Lockean critique of law enforcement asset sharing in drug forfeiture law and practice. Criminal Justice Review, 21(2), 197–230.