Reducing Racial Inequalities in Criminal Justice: Data, Courts, and Systems of Supervision Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief (2021) / Chapter Skim
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Reducing Racial Inequalities in Criminal Justice: Data, Courts, and Systems of Supervision: Proceedings of a Workshop - in Brief
Reducing Racial Inequalities in Criminal Justice: Data, Courts, and Systems of Supervision: Proceedings of a Workshop - in Brief
Pages 1-12
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This workshop, the third in a series of three, enabled the committee to gather information from a diverse set of stakeholders and experts to inform the consensus study process. IMPROVING UNDERSTANDING OF RACIAL DISPARITIES Committee member Nancy Rodriguez opened the first session of this workshop by explaining that it was designed to highlight the experiences of diverse groups that are disproportionately impacted by racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.
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Most importantly, said Charley, the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women works to ensure that "tribal communities are represented within conversations [they] have historically and intentionally been underrepresented in." This movement seeks to shift power to tribal communities, to practice restorative justice, and to address violence against women as part of an ongoing system of inequality.
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Over the past 20 years, she said, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has done an "increasingly good job" of including Indigenous people in the data that are collected. Yet Jorgenson said that the lack of reliable data makes it very difficult to determine the best phase in the system at which to intervene to address racial disparities.
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The SJC centers equity in its work, and its goals include shrinking the footprint of the criminal justice system and eliminating racial disparities in the system. A network of sites representing 51 cities and counties across 32 states (about 16 % of the confined jail population in the United States)
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Mapping Police Violence At the time of the Ferguson, Missouri, protests in 2014, said Sam Sinyangwe (Campaign Zero) , there was very little data available on police use of force, including deadly force.
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Holston concluded by urging the police to develop relationships of trust with the community to address gun violence and other issues. Community members who have dealt with the abuse of police power "carry these stories with them," he said, and changing the trajectory of public safety requires reconciliation between impacted communities and law enforcement.
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The results found that Black detainees were less likely to be able to do this for a number of reasons, including weaker family ties, higher unemployment, a history of multiple arrests, and incarceration being seen in some communities as a "rite of passage." As a result of these factors, Black respondents spent a greater number of days in pretrial detention and were at greater risk of associated risks and harms, she said. Specifically, a growing body of research indicates that pretrial detention can harm individuals' physical and psychological well-being, Smith noted.
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Because both of these approaches are harmful, she said, the Pretrial Justice Institute is building a third approach. This systemwide approach utilizes many of the policies other speakers discussed, including: • Addressing the local community culture to encourage reductions in detention • Providing nonlaw enforcement options for crises response to reduce contact with the criminal jus tice system • Decriminalizing some behaviors, such as those related to homelessness • Making extensive use of citations and summons, rather than arrests and detentions • Narrowing detention eligibility to reflect the goals of the pretrial detention system (i.e., promote public safety, ensure appearance in court)
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"Criminal justice reform is racial justice reform," said Rapping, because the criminal legal system is where the problems of marginalized communities are addressed. Mass incarceration, in Rapping's view, is simply the latest incarnation of the 400-year old racial narrative of the United States, and public defenders have the opportunity to interrupt that narrative.
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The Innocence Project has worked on reforms to improve accuracy, such as in eyewitness identification, forensics, and use of videotaped interrogations. However, she said, the problem of wrongful convictions goes beyond the issue of accuracy; it is "demonstrative of larger issues of mass incarceration and policing, what is considered criminal, and even whose lives matter." Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are also present in wrongful convictions and exonerations; Black people are about seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than White people, and Black exonerees on average spend several years more in prison before exoneration, noted Potkin.
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However, Hernández said, on the ground, immigration law enforcement treats people of different racial backgrounds disparately. "Almost everyone" detained by ICE hails from Latin America, he said, and Black migrants are less likely to be able to avoid pretrial detention while litigating their cases.
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COMMITTEE ON REDUCING RACIAL INEQUALITIES IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM Khalil G Muhammad (Co-Chair)
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