Courtroom 302

Larry Bates completes his community service as part of his probation, but the punishment “didn’t cure him of his crack addiction” (107). Bates is nabbed selling drugs again, and this time, his bail is set at $10,000, far more money than Bates can access. Eight days later, however, he is released on a recognizance bond—meaning that he is free without paying a fine. Judges often make this decision to avoid overcrowding in jails. Bates has already twice gotten probation. If he is caught again, he knows he’ll go to prison. Still, he can’t resist the “taste” of crack cocaine, which he found “overwhelming.” 

Bates is arrested for selling “two rocks,” worth $20 together, “to an undercover officer” (109). On the night of his arrest, when he is taken into lockup on 26th Street with other incarcerated individuals, he curses himself for being so stupid. 

At the time of the book’s publication, there are 320,000 people convicted of drug offenses in prison; it costs taxpayers over $7 billion to incarcerate them. The “compassionate approach to drug abuse” that prevailed during the 1960s declined in the late 1970s when illicit drug use among white people declined (111). 

In 1980, Bates was laid off from the warehouse job he had for five years.