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I agree with everything Zooey wrote.
The racial disparities in the criminal justice system are too stark and clear to deny, really. If you are not familiar with the stats, prepare yourself for some startling numbers.
I mean, they show an appalling race/poverty issue. The stats just go on and on and on. Arrests, convictions, sentencing, probation, you name it…whatever part of the system you look at you get….well, see below :
“….Many of the factors contributing to this inequality can be attributed to the system instead of to different behavior between blacks and whites.
Nothing illustrates the difference between justice for the races than the war on drugs. Whites and blacks use drugs at roughly the same rate – there isn’t a statistically significant difference, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Black people, however, are arrested for drug use at a much higher rate. At the disparities’ peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s, blacks were five times more likely to be arrested for drugs than whites were…..”
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“…according to research from The Sentencing Project. The ACLU also found authorization to seek the death penalty was more likely when there was at least one white victim in the case…”…
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“…SWAT teams are most often deployed for drug searches, an arrest category that targets people of color…”
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“…In many U.S. counties, Ferguson included, police officers serving the citizens are mostly white, while residents of the county are mostly people of color, according to The Washington Post…”http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/12/11/no-justice-is-not-colorblind
=======“…Police are three times as likely to search the cars of stopped black drivers than stopped white drivers, as the chart below, based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, illustrates. Nationally, black drivers are also more likely to be pulled over and less likely to receive a reason for being stopped. In one Rhode Island study, black drivers were stopped more even though they were less likely to receive a citation…”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/08/racial_disparities_in_the_criminal_justice_system_eight_charts_illustrating.html
————–“…A 2014 study in New York City showed that blacks were more likely than whites or nonblack minorities to be in jail while they await trial, even after controlling for the seriousness of charges and prior record. Other research suggests that this disparity is often due to the fact that black defendants cannot afford to pay bail. The temporary incarceration stigmatizes the defendant, disrupts family life and employment, and makes it harder for the defendant to prepare a defense. In the chart below, “jail” refers to defendants who were offered bail but could not post it; “remanded” refers to defendants who were not given the option of posting bail…”
————d”…The same study in New York found that black defendants are more likely to be offered plea deals that include prison time than whites or nonblack minorities. Even after controlling for many factors, including the seriousness of charges and prior record, blacks were 13 percent more likely than whites to be offered such deals..”
——–“…Researchers found that North Carolina prosecutors were excluding black people from juries in capital cases at twice the rate of other jurors, even when controlling for legitimate justifications for striking jurors, such as employment status or reservations about the death penalty. Other studies have shown that excluding black people from juries can influence deliberations and verdicts. For example, black defendants in capital cases with white victims are less likely to receive a death sentence if there is a black juror….”
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“…2012 working paper found “robust evidence” that black male federal defendants were given longer sentences than comparable whites. Black men’s sentences were, on average, 10 percent longer than those of their white peers. This is partly explained by the fact that prosecutors are about twice as likely to file charges against blacks that carry mandatory minimum sentences than against whites..”
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“….Black convicts have their probation revoked more often than whites and other minorities, according to a recent study of probation outcomes in Iowa, New York, Oregon, and Texas. These racial disparities held even when the study controlled for other characteristics of the probationers, such as their age, crime severity, and criminal history. In the chart below, the “unexplained” portion of each bar is the level of racial disparity that could not be explained by nonracial characteristics….”============================
It just goes on and on. I could post stats for an hour.
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