When Michael Bryant was found with illegal drugs last year, it landed him in jail for about a month, exacerbating his problems with addiction.

Bryant, who is now 33, had been struggling with drug addiction for much of his life, and the problems got worse in 2015, when he moved to Austin from New York after a difficult breakup. In February 2019, police found him with less than two ounces of marijuana a small amount of methamphetamines. He was charged with second-degree drug possession for the methamphetamines, even though Bryant says he had less than a gram diluted with water in a syringe.

His public defender told him that given the other drug-related felonies on his record, there was likely little he could do to avoid jail time, Bryant said. He badly needed treatment, and said he was just coming around to the idea of rehab. But before he could get help, he became entangled in the legal system and now owes thousands of dollars to probation.

“I don’t think that throwing people in jail and convicting them and throwing them in prison for small charges like that is going to do them any good,” Bryant said. “Those people aren’t going to get the help they need. They’re just going to get right out of prison and go right back to using drugs.”

A coalition of criminal justice reform groups has found significant racial disparities in arrests and incarceration rates for people in possession of a gram or less of controlled substances in Travis County, Texas. A new report on the findings comes as the county’s largest police department, in Austin, faces accusations of institutional racism and overzealous policing of people for drug use, even in cases where both the City Council and the county prosecutor have said they will not prosecute.

The report, released Tuesday by four Texas-based organizations, shows a sharp uptick in the overall number of drug arrests across the county. “Between 2013 and 2017, the number of low-level Possession of a Controlled Substance (POCS) cases in Travis County increased by 43 percent,” while the county’s courts experienced a 67 percent increase in new felony drug possession cases, the report states. Travis County stands out from the rest of the state, with an increase in drug possession cases that was 2.5 times higher than other Texas courts.

At a community conversation held in Houston’s Third Ward last summer, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said she wants to send a message: “Put down your gun and pick up an employment application.” The video received hundreds of comments after activist Shaun King posted it on Facebook. Many responses focused on how her remarks seemed tone deaf from a prosecutor who was elected to bring fairness and equity to Harris County’s criminal legal system.

“The idea of just putting the guns down and picking up a job application sounds innocent, but it’s one of the long-living white supremacist ideas that completely ignores the many barriers put in place for POC [people of color], especially those with backgrounds that her office unnecessarily charges,” Monique Joseph, a field organizer with Texas Advocates for Justice, told The Appeal in a text message. ”Her comment is ultimately condescending and feeds into the stereotype that Black men don’t want to work and, therefore, deserve to be treated harshly by the system.”