Race & Justice News: Nine Black Women Elected To Circuit and District Court in Alabama

Black Federal District Judges’ Verdicts More Frequently Overturned
Reforms
Bail Reform in New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois
Maryland’s Court of Appeals recently issued a new rule to move away from cash bail by instructing judges and court commissioners to look for alternative ways to insure that individuals will show up for trial. Last November, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender released a report revealing that money bail disproportionately impacts low-income black defendants, and in October Attorney General Brian Frosh warned courts that excessively high bail was likely unconstitutional. Cherise Fanno Burdeen of the Pretrial Justice Institute adds: “It’s now up to the state legislature to pursue comprehensive reforms of the state’s pretrial system and move away from money bail towards [what] we know works: evidence-backed pretrial risk assessment and supervision.”Illinois lawmakers have recently introduced legislation that would abolish cash bail by allowing individuals charged with nonviolent crimes to be released until their court date, and giving judges discretion to choose detention or electronic monitoring for those accused of violent crimes.
Will Oregon Lawmakers Finally Tackle Racial Bias?
A recent Investigate West article suggests Oregon’s legislature may finally have the momentum to address the racial disparities in its criminal justice system. In 1994, a task force led by the Oregon Supreme Court produced a report and developed 72 recommendations for reducing racial disparities. The report found that people of color were more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and imprisoned, but less likely to be released on bail or placed on probation. Of the package of bills introduced to the 1995 Legislature, only two were approved—one prohibiting juror selection based on race, and the other prohibiting racially prejudiced citizens from serving on a jury. All the other bills failed, including mandatory training of judges and lawyers on implicit bias.
The state’s approach to addressing racial disparity has evolved over the past two decades; many judges and lawyers have voluntarily attended implicit bias training. In 2013, Oregon passed racial impact statement legislation, which provided a process for formally requesting a racial impact statement when considering criminal justice and child welfare legislations. The years of research, reports, task forces, and hearings have helped to build momentum, explained Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who added: “I feel like we’re at a real point where we can actually get something on the books.”
Immigration
Expanding Federal Immigration Enforcement
In early February, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 680 undocumented immigrants throughout the country. While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which overseas ICE, said that about 75% of those arrested were “criminal aliens,” they also noted that this term includes anyone who has entered the United States illegally or overstayed or violated the terms of a visa. An estimated 11 million people in the United States fit that description. The potential deportation of undocumented immigrants with no convictions sent a wave of shock and fear through immigrant communities nationwide.
President Donald Trump has increased the scope of immigration law enforcement, allowing those with minor offenses or no convictions at all to be detained and deported. During President Barack Obama’s first term, deportation targets included those convicted of minor offenses such as shoplifting but this policy was later changed to focus on individuals convicted of serious crimes, terrorism suspects, and those who had recently arrived. The New York Times explains, “By the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, around 90% of the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants were not a priority for deportation.”
More recently, DHS released two memos which detailed plans to publicize crimes by undocumented immigrants, remove privacy protections for such immigrants, enlist police officers as enforcers, create new detention facilities, discourage asylum seekers, and speed up deportations.
JUVENILE JUSTICE
Persistent Racial Disparities in New Jersey’s Youth Commitments
Using Restorative Justice to Reform School Discipline in Syracuse
The Syracuse School District is using restorative justice practices to reduce suspensions, expulsions, and racial disparities in school discipline, according to The Crime Report. Students in this district are almost six times as likely to live in poverty as students in neighboring districts, and Syracuse’s communities of color are roughly three times more likely to live in poverty than the city’s white residents. After the Attorney General’s office investigated racial disparities in student discipline, the school district agreed to a plan requiring implicit bias and cultural competency training, and restructuring of the code of conduct to include restorative practices.
Restorative justice practices focus on community-building and conflict resolution instead of punishment. Under the new plan, the proportion of referrals that are punitive fell from 58% to 35% between 2014 and 2016. However, black students are still disproportionately suspended. School administrators are hopeful that more training will reduce this disparity.