In Search and Destroy, Jerome Miller demonstrates that an African-American male between the ages of 18 and 35 has an inordinate likelihood of encountering the criminal justice system at some point during those years. Miller contends that the drug war's racial bias has exacerbated an already present prejudice throughout the criminal justice system.

In a wide-ranging survey, Miller describes widespread bias among police officers, probation officers, and courts, while social scientists, whose data form the basis for much policy toward crime, and social workers, whose responsibility is allegedly to members of the underclass, have uncritically accepted the questionable assumptions of criminal justice processing.

He warns that the sudden rekindling of interest in genetics and crime along with the creation of a massive crime control industry hold even greater danger for racial minorities in their encounters with the justice system.