Jurors for Justice

Real ProblemsThe Tipping Point: Over-Incarceration Hurts CommunitiesAn Expensive Failure: The Cost of Our Broken Justice SystemUnequal Justice: Racial Disparities in SentencingReal SolutionsModel Citizens: How Mentors Prevent CrimePower to the People: Jury Nullification as Passive ResistanceAnother Chance: Alternative Sentencing

Unequal Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Criminal Justice


Disparities in Enforcement

Though many commentators have argues that America has entered a pos-racial period, racial hostility and disparities in law enforcement have not disappeared.

War on Drugs

Whites are disproportionately less likely to be prosecuted for drug offenses in the first place; when prosecuted, they are more likely to be acquitted; and even if convicted, they are much less likely to be sent to prison.

Though African Americans make up 15% of the country’s drug users, they comprise 74% of those imprisoned for a drug offense. Nationally, a black man is 11.8 times more likely than a white man to be imprisoned for a drug-related conviction.1 The disparity is greatest in Wisconsin, where black males are 42 times more likely to be incarcerated for a drug violation than whites.2

Tragically, this shouldn't be a surprise; historically, drug criminalization has been plagued by racist motivations. In 1875, opium was outlawed in San Francisco due to the fear that Chinese men were using it top seduce white women. Cocaine was targeted in the early 1900s due to the belief that it caused "hitherto inoffensive negro[es]" to "run amok in a cocaine frenzy." Marijuana was prohibited because of the belief, expressed by one Texas Senator, that "all Mexicans are crazy, and [marijuana] is what makes them crazy."3

Frisking

Most police departments are not required to keep records of the number of persons subject to Terry detentions but, sometimes, this information becomes public. In particular, research on police officers' use of frisking reveals a dramatic disparity in the targets of such frisks.

The New York City Council, for example, has required the New York Police Department to provide quarterly reports on the race of persons who officers stop and frisk. The Rand Corporation reviewed all pedestrian stops in New York City in 2006. According to RAND's report on NYC frisking, Almost 90% of people who were both stopped and frisked were members of a minority group, mainly African-American. In two predominantly black neighborhoods, residents had a 30 to 36% chance of being stopped in 2006, while the overall chance of a New York City resident being stopped was 6%. Fewer than 10% of these frisks resulted in arrests. 4

Footnotes

1. Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Fact Sheet.
2. Crocker Stephenson. State leads in prison drug gap. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. May 6, 2008: Wisconsin.
3. Paul Butler. Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice. New York City: The New Press, 2009, pgs. 43-45.
4. Ridgeway, Greg. Analysis of Racial Disparities in the New York Police Department's Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007.