ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book seeks to persuade the reader to look at the problem of disproportion from a different perspective—that which examines how the problem emerges from the process of social construction and claims-making activities that take place in the courtroom arena. It examines the gradual emergence of the link between race and drugs, with the racialisation of drug trafficking during the 1980s. The book shows how the typification of black defendants as drug traffickers remains, a dominant representation in the prosecution's language and the prosecution deconstructs the drug trafficker image in white defendants' cases by describing the defendants in relation to drug use. It describes how judges react to allegations of drug trafficking made by the prosecution. Irrespective of similarities in drug cases, black defendants faced more convictions than their white counterparts.
