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12:1 incarceration disparity for Black NJ residents – What should be done?
#DecarcerateNJ http://bit.ly/290rXEj
The most recent drop of the Sentencing Project analysis in racial disparities in incarceration,
comparing the states based upon the rate racially of white versus Black catching
a prison sentence has revealed that NJ has the worse racial disparity in the
entire nation – a Black person in NJ is 12 times as likely a white to end up in
prison. Comically (almost) when the
media first reported on this information they described the disparity
incorrectly – the headlines first said that for every white in NJ’s statefacilities there are 12 Blacks. That was
incorrect.
While NJ’s over all rates of incarceration for both white
and Black are better than much of the nation, the racial differences are *the
very worse* in the nation. These
revelations underscore the need for the work of Decarcerate the Garden State
and provide an exclamation point for the importance of the September 9th
organizing we are focused upon.
One response spearheaded by Rev. Charles Boyer in NJ is to
support the passage of legislation calling for racial impact statements with
any new legislation in NJ that affects criminal justice issues.
This is an important effort.
It will be voted upon in the full Senate this Monday, June 27. Decarcerate the Garden State has contacted
its legislators via e-mail and twitter supporting a YES vote and we urge our
membership to do the same. Here is the
latest PSA (on behalf of Rev. Boyer) from our blog site urging everyone to also
contact their legislator. Please follow
suit and get your letters, calls, tweets in to your representatives immediately.
http://decarceratenj.blogspot.com/2016/06/psa-tell-your-nj-senate-yes-on-s-677.html
http://decarceratenj.blogspot.com/2016/06/psa-tell-your-nj-senate-yes-on-s-677.html
We should not stop there however. The racial disparity is a severe issue and we
need to further analyze the reasons for it and to *dig deeper into the data* to
determine who are the actors and what are the methods being utilized to deliver
these horrendous discrepancies.
NJ should do a study and if the state is unwilling to fund
such a study, media outlets and researchers, on campuses and in organizations should
take it up. To put it bluntly – we need
to develop racial scorecards for NJ judges, NJ prosecutors, NJ municipal and
county courts, police forces and individual police. We need to analyze the data and break it
down. Racial disparities should be
explained – controlling for factors.
Things that need to be determined include:
Who is arrested for what offenses compared to the propensity
of each group to commit such offenses.
What are the number of charges applied for a single incident
or offense? Are charges being wobbled
and then leveraged to force pleas and longer sentences?
What are the conviction rates for similar crimes?
What are the sentences meted out for similar convictions.?
What are arrest records vs. crime incidence vs. community
demographics of individual police, of precints, of officers under police
captains, etc?
For prosecutors, analysis of racial factors in their leniency
or harshness, in their selection of which cases to prosecute, racial
disparities in their conviction rates, in plea bargaining and other aspects of
their prosecution.
There are probably many other aspects of NJ meting out of “criminal
justice” that need to be placed under the microscope.
We also should start calling attention to these issues by
picketing courthouses that have particularly egregious records – or calling
press conferences outside while court is in session. On the one hand the press conferences and
pickets can correspond with particular cases that bear further examination to
determine if race is a factor but on the other hand – that might not be
necessary because it is clear that race is always a factor in NJ from the
patrol, to the arrest, to the charging, to the treatment in jail, to the bail,
to the scheduling of the trial, to the prosecution, to the conviction rates, to
the sentencing, and then to the treatment in prison and to the eligibility and
approval for parole (and many other aspects).
It is imperative. To
let this study be just one more set of statistics that we complain about
without acting upon the results just guarantees that the bleak quality of life
will continue for much of NJ’s residency, particularly the Black residency –
but all of us as well since racially concentrated mass incarceration destroys community potential.
Once we more fully understand NJ’s racial dynamic in
criminal justice we can determine the solutions:
1.
First and foremost provide immediate relief
through amnesty and sentence commutation to time served for all of those found
to have been victimized by racial factors in any aspect of their encounter with
NJ’s discriminating criminal justice system.
2.
Address the related social dynamics that
contribute to behavior resulting in arrest.
3.
Identify and weed out police, prosecutors,
judges and attorneys general that show bias in their administration of justice.
4.
Put in place monitoring and training to prevent
continuation of such racial application of law enforcement and criminal justice
in NJ.
Meanwhile we should address these issues in our organizing
around September 9 and we should start a full court press with picketing,
leaflet distribution and press conferences outside courthouses where these
racial factors are being applied.
These issues are complex so care must be taken but for the
report to flow downstream with only lip service from politicians and inaction
from the community will allow this problem only to grow worse.
Sept. 9 Current Status:
Sept. 9 Current Status:
Excellent read so true and straight to the point.
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