Race & Justice News: Racial Disparities in UK and Australian Prisons Exceeds Those in U.S.

(From The Sentencing Project)

Race & Justice News

International

Racial Disparities in Incarceration in UK and Australia Exceed Those in United States

Black people are even more disproportionately incarcerated in the UK than in the United States, according to a report by the Young Review on black, Asian, and minority ethnic offenders. The report indicates that young black and/or Muslim men in Britain are overrepresented at all stages of the criminal justice system and face significantly poorer outcomes than their white counterparts. These men are stopped and searched by police at disproportionately high rates and the percentage of Muslims incarcerated in England and Wales has nearly doubled since 2002. In addition, black people in the UK are more likely than other groups to plead not guilty and face a trial penalty, to be subjected to segregation and use of force while in prison, and to reoffend.

The report recommends how these data can inform Britain’s Transforming Rehabilitation initiative, a series of criminal justice system reforms to reduce disproportionate outcomes for young black and/or Muslim men. Recommendations include: cultural competence education for policymakers and criminal justice system staff, greater representation of formerly incarcerated individuals as volunteers and workers in prison and community settings, and improved data collection to identify and eliminate disparities by ethnicity, faith, language, and age.

Though indigenous people represent only 2.5% of Australia’s total population, they constitute 27% of those incarcerated, Al Jazeera reports. The rate of indigenous incarceration has become so high – now 18 times higher than that of non-indigenous Australians and representing a 50% increase in the last decade – that the Law Council of Australia has declared it a national emergency. Academics and activists attribute this crisis not to higher crime rates, but rather to “harsher sentencing, bail laws, and a move away from alternative sentencing measures.”

Collateral Consequences

Jobseekers with Minor Arrest Records Face Employment Barriers

Even low-level criminal records, including disorderly conduct arrests, can harm employment prospects, finds a study by Christopher Uggen and co-investigators in the American Society of Criminology. Extensive research has revealed stark discrimination against people with felony-level prison records, particularly African Americans, but relatively few studies have explored whether this discrimination extends to low-level records. In “The Edge of Stigma: An Experimental Audit of the Effects of Low-Level Criminal Records on Employment,” the researchers sent matched pairs of African-American and white men to apply for a total of 300 entry-level jobs in Minnesota between 2007 and 2008. One of each pair had a sole arrest on their record for disorderly conduct. Those without arrests were approximately 4% more likely to get a callback in each racial group. White men with a low-level record received a callback rate approximately 11% higher than African-American males with no record.

While the arrest record did not harm candidates’ prospects as a felony record might have, the authors noted that discrediting those with arrest records disproportionately harms African-American jobseekers, as 49% of African-American men are arrested at least once before the age of 23, compared to 38% of white men. Uggen et al. recommend that policymakers reconsider which records can be made available to the public and the duration for which records are available.

Criminal Records Produce Widespread Economic Barriers

Criminal records cause significant obstacles to economic security, according to the recent Center for American Progress report, “One Strike and You’re Out: How We Can Eliminate Barriers to Economic Security and Mobility for People with Criminal Records” by Rebecca Vallas and Sharon Dietrich. As many as 1 in 3 Americans has a criminal record, many of which never resulted in a conviction or only for a misdemeanor or minor infraction. People of color are disproportionately affected by criminal records: 49% of black men and 44% percent of Hispanic men have been arrested by age 23. People with convictions face barriers to employment, housing, public assistance, and education. These barriers adversely impact not only individuals, but also their families, communities, and the entire economy: the U.S. loses an estimated $65 billion per year in gross domestic product due to the unemployment of people with criminal records.

To mitigate these effects, the report recommends that non-conviction records be automatically sealed or expunged at no charge and that minor records be sealed after rehabilitation is demonstrated. Further, the report lists policy recommendations regarding criminal records for federal, state, and local governments, employers, and colleges and universities, along with suggesting sentencing policy reform and increasing federal funding for re-entry services.

Books

Bryan Stevenson: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done”

While preparing a Supreme Court case on behalf of children sentenced to die in prison, Bryan Stevenson came to better understand his grandfather’s murder at the hands of a group of teens who had intended to burglarize his home. As he explains in Just Mercy:

Contemporary neurological, psychological, and sociological evidence has established that children are impaired by immature judgment, an underdeveloped capacity for self-regulation and responsibility, vulnerability to negative influences and outside pressures, and a lack of control over their own impulses and their environment.

This understanding shaped the Supreme Court’s decision to ban the death penalty for juveniles. Stevenson and his team at the Equal Justice Initiative successfully extended these insights to limit imprisonment without the possibility of parole for juveniles in Miller v. Alabama and Graham v. Florida, and continue working to enforce these decisions.

In recounting the cases and experiences that shaped his commitment to ending extreme punishment in the United States, the award-winning litigator humanizes the men and women on death row and youth sentenced to die in prison. The book unfolds around the harrowing story of Walter McMillian – from his wrongful conviction and death sentence for the murder of a young white woman in 1988, to his eventual release in 1993, followed soon after by his decline into dementia. Along the way, Stevenson also tells of abused and neglected children, including Trina Garnett, who were prosecuted as adults and experienced mistreatment in adult facilities; and executed men including Herbert Richardson, who committed terrible acts and strove to find redemption. Stevenson is scheduled to discuss the book at local events across the country and abroad.

Reforms

Justice Department Expands Rules Against Racial Profiling for Federal Law Enforcement, with Major Exceptions

The Department of Justice has issued new rules to limit the use of racial profiling by federal law enforcement, reports the Washington Post. The new guidelines expand the department’s previous policy against racial profiling, which prohibited the consideration of race and ethnicity in law enforcement decisions except in national security investigations. Now, federal officers will also be prohibited from considering national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and these rules will be extended to some national security cases for the first time.

However, many civil rights activists contend that these long-awaited changes fall short of addressing some of the most problematic instances of racial profiling. Activities by certain agencies are exempt from the new rules, such as the Transportation Security Administration’s screening of airline passengers and Customs and Border Protection’s southwestern border patrol activities. Most significantly, the new rules do not apply to state and local police departments, despite growing concern about the use of racial profiling and excessive force among officers at the state and local levels. The Department of Justice hopes to encourage these agencies to adopt similar policies against racial profiling by serving as a model that proves fair policing practices are the most effective.