People of color are disproportionately harmed by the criminal justice system. The racial disparities are staggering and well-documented nationwide and in Oregon. District attorneys can help address this. But they need to stop ducking their responsibility and denying that disparities exist.
Throughout the US, people of color are more likely to be:
As analysis by USA Today using FBI statistics frames it, people of color are “more likely than others to be arrested in almost every city for almost every type of crime. Nationwide, black people are arrested at higher rates for crimes as serious as murder and assault, and as minor as loitering and marijuana possession.”
Black men are more than twice as likely to be charged with an offense that carries a mandatory minimum sentence as white men facing similar circumstances, according to a study in the Yale Law Journal. Another study, published in Criminology, found that prosecutors are more likely to level “habitual offender” charges against people of color.
People of color are more than five times as likely to be incarcerated in state prisons, according to research from the Research from the Sentencing Project.
Unfortunately, these disparities are not just a national problem. We see them in Oregon too. Oregon’s criminal justice system is plagued by practices that treat people of color unfairly. Here are some examples:
Some law enforcement leaders will try and avoid responsibility by advancing the myth that people of color commit crimes at higher rates. That’s untrue.
The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) did an excellent job dispelling that argument when examining the racial disparity of drug convictions in Oregon. The CJC looked at the disparate conviction rates for possession of controlled substance broken down by race. Then they looked at the national data on drug use broken down by race.
What they found is that people of color and white people use drugs at about the same rate. So why are people of color more likely to be arrested, charged, and incarcerated than white people are?
As the most powerful people in the criminal justice system, district attorneys need to acknowledge that our system is racially biased, and that these disparities exist. The problem doesn’t get solved without a real commitment from leaders and stakeholders in the justice system.
Unfortunately, some DAs have a history of ignoring the evidence, and responding with denial, shock, confusion, and finger pointing. DAs that acknowledge the issue and commit to working on it will be received with much more trust and respect than those who deny institutional bias exists.
For example, when The Oregonian asked Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote about the startling disparities in heroin and methamphetamine convictions. “I couldn’t see anything,” he said. “I took it back to the whole team. We don’t see a pattern.” Washington County DA, Bob Herman said he was surprised, he worried that the sample size of the research was too small to be useful.
Bias is real, both implicitly and explicitly. Even the U.S. Supreme Court has acknowledged research on implicit bias showing that, despite our best intentions, unconscious prejudice affects all of us, molding our behavior in ways we are unaware of.
Sometimes racial disparity is indeed the result of intent. For example, a Georgia Supreme Court Case found that prosecutors violated the Constitution by proactively striking black jurors when the defendants were black.
The vast majority district attorneys and other officials within the criminal justice system intend to treat others with fairness and equality. But our district attorneys and the prosecutors that work for them need to acknowledge that the racial bias exists to begin the process of fixing the disparities within our criminal justice system
This information gathering and analysis is key to helping to identify solutions.
Prosecution and Racial Justice: Using Data to Advance Fairness in Criminal Prosecution, Vera Institute for Justice
A Prosecutor’s Guide for Advancing Racal Equity, Vera Institute for Justice
Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Jails: Recommendations for Local Practice, Brennan Center for Justice
The Milwaukee Experiment: What can one prosecutor do about the mass incarceration of African Americans? 2015 The New Yorker