E/CN.4/1995/78/Add.1 page 17 manipulated. The public figures include Julian Bond, a Georgia State legislator, Clarence Mitchell III, a Maryland Senator, Federal Judge Alcee Hastings; the following Congressmen: Ron Dellums, Floyd Flake, Harold Ford, Mervyn Dymally, John Conyers, Charles Rangel, William Clay and William Gray; the following mayors: Andrew Young, Maynard Jackson, Tom Bradley, Coleman Young, David Dinkins, Harold Washington and Marion Barry. Only Marion Barry, the former mayor of Washington who has since been reelected, was convicted of using cocaine. The various charges held against a number of others were dropped, and those who were tried were acquitted. 28/ F. Criminal justice and the application of the death penalty 59. There is a glaring disparity between the number of so-called coloured prisoners and the number of Whites in the United States prison population. Some people account for this by the fact that persons from ethnic minorities are more inclined to take to crime because of their idleness. For others, on the contrary, the judicial system is particularly severe or even discriminatory towards such persons. For the same offence or crime, a Black, a Latino, an Asian, an Indian or an Arab is likely to receive a penalty that is two to three times harsher than a White’s. This imbalance is also the result of the inadequate representation of ethnic minorities on juries. 60. Racial factors affect the judicial process, from the moment of arrest right through to the trial. Here again, the figures speak for themselves. For example, although men of African American origin make up 6 per cent of the United States population, they represent 44 per cent of prison inmates. It is common knowledge that one out of four black males aged 20 to 29 is either in prison, on parole or probation. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, in the United States as a whole 80 per cent of drug users are white, whereas Whites only make up 7 per cent of those arrested on drug charges and Blacks 28 per cent. 29/ Moreover, the risk for a Black woman of going to prison for drug use is eight times higher than the risk for a White woman. 61. It should be added that the systematic preference given in the 1980s to a repressive policy towards crime rather than preventive and rehabilitative programmes led to a considerable increase in the prison population. It has been estimated that by the year 2000 the United States prison population is likely to reach 2,500,000. This repressive trend has led to an unprecedented boom in the prison industry. Between 1969 and 1989 the United States cut its education budget by 25 per cent and increased the criminal justice budget by 400 per cent. 30/ Nowadays, the total cost of incarceration, including the construction, maintenance and renovation of prisons, is estimated at $100 billion. 31/ 62. In addition to ordinary criminals, anti-racist and independence activists who regard themselves as political prisoners, even though their country’s legal system does not recognize them as such, make up a sizeable proportion of the inmates of American prisons. The Prisoners of Conscience Project of the National Council of Churches of Christ, USA, for example, is in contact with some 100 political and religious prisoners - the majority of them militant fighters in struggles against white supremacy and racism and for self-determination for people of colour in the United States. Convicted as "criminals", many of them are sentenced to inordinately long prison terms, in