Monday, July 23, 2007
Editorial: Locking away minorities
Virginia lawmakers pretend racial disparity doesn't exist in the justice system.
From the RoundTable blog
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Results of an analysis recently released by The Sentencing Project are not at all surprising: Nationally, blacks are incarcerated at a rate nearly six times that of whites, and Hispanics at nearly double the rate.
In Virginia, blacks fare even worse.
But just because the study reflects what common knowledge and other reports have already said doesn't mean that it should be dismissed.
"Racial disparities in incarceration reflect a failure of social and economic interventions to address crime effectively and also indicate racial bias in the justice system," said the project's director, Marc Mauer.
The Sentencing Project offers a few suggestions for how federal and state systems could begin to address the disparity: finally addressing federal cocaine statutes that heavily penalize crack-cocaine peddlers; restoring judicial discretion during sentencing, and establishing standards for indigent defense.
Virginia lawmakers recently took baby steps toward providing more effective counsel for indigent defendants, but the system remains heavily skewed toward prosecution. At least lawmakers are slowly acknowledging the need for a fairer court system.
However, lawmakers remain reluctant to acknowledge that race is a factor, or at least could be, in leading to the higher percentage of blacks being arrested in the first place.
Kent Willis, executive director of the ACLU in Virginia, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "While the issue is a complex one that goes beyond law enforcement, Virginia's legislators have refused year after year to pass a bill that would study the degree to which racial profiling by police exists in Virginia. Opponents say that there is no need to study racism in Virginia's criminal-justice system because it doesn't exist. This report says otherwise."
The disparity is likely to worsen, at least for Hispanics as communities across Virginia adopt hard lines against illegal immigrants. The zeal to lock up "illegals" will undoubtedly lead to police profiling of Hispanics.
The governor, attorney general and lawmakers need to look at The Sentencing Project's work and draw up legislation that, at the very least, would study and, more important, acknowledge the flaws in the system.
