The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States

The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States

A Look at the Racial Disparities Inherent in Our Nation’s Criminal-Justice System

 

SOURCE: AP/ California Department of Corrections

Eliminating the racial disparities inherent to our nation’s criminal-justice policies and practices must be at the heart of a renewed, refocused, and reenergized movement for racial justice in America.

By Sophia Kerby | March 13, 2012

This month the United States celebrates the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965 to commemorate our shared history of the civil rights movement and our nation’s continued progress towards racial equality. Yet decades later a broken criminal-justice system has proven that we still have a long way to go in achieving racial equality.

Today people of color continue to be disproportionately incarcerated, policed, and sentenced to death at significantly higher rates than their white counterparts. Further, racial disparities in the criminal-justice system threaten communities of color—disenfranchising thousands by limiting voting rights and denying equal access to employment, housing, public benefits, and education to millions more. In light of these disparities, it is imperative that criminal-justice reform evolves as the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

Below we outline the top 10 facts pertaining to the criminal-justice system’s impact on communities of color.

1. While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned. The prison population grew by 700 percent from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men.

2. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Individuals of color have a disproportionate number of encounters with law enforcement, indicating that racial profiling continues to be a problem. A report by the Department of Justice found that blacks and Hispanics were approximately three times more likely to be searchedduring a traffic stop than white motorists. African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.

3. Students of color face harsher punishments in school than their white peers, leading to a higher number of youth of color incarcerated. Black and Hispanic students represent more than 70 percent of those involved in school-related arrests or referrals to law enforcement. Currently, African Americans make up two-fifths and Hispanics one-fifth of confined youth today.

4. According to recent data by the Department of Education, African American students are arrested far more often than their white classmates.The data showed that 96,000 students were arrested and 242,000 referred to law enforcement by schools during the 2009-10 school year. Of those students, black and Hispanic students made up more than 70 percent of arrested or referred students. Harsh school punishments, from suspensions to arrests, have led to high numbers of youth of color coming into contact with the juvenile-justice system and at an earlier age.

5. African American youth have higher rates of juvenile incarceration and are more likely to be sentenced to adult prison. According to the Sentencing Project, even though African American juvenile youth are about 16 percent of the youth population, 37 percent of their cases are moved to criminal court and 58 percent of African American youth are sent to adult prisons.

6. As the number of women incarcerated has increased by 800 percentover the last three decades, women of color have been disproportionately represented. While the number of women incarcerated is relatively low, the racial and ethnic disparities are startling. African American women are three times more likely than white women to be incarcerated, while Hispanic women are 69 percent more likely than white women to be incarcerated.

7. The war on drugs has been waged primarily in communities of color where people of color are more likely to receive higher offenses. According to the Human Rights Watch, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but they have higher rate of arrests. African Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users but are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses. From 1980 to 2007 about one in three of the 25.4 million adults arrested for drugs was African American.

8. Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison.

9. Voter laws that prohibit people with felony convictions to vote disproportionately impact men of color. An estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote based on a past felony conviction. Felony disenfranchisement is exaggerated by racial disparities in the criminal-justice system, ultimately denying13 percent of African American men the right to vote. Felony-disenfranchisement policies have led to 11 states denying the right to vote to more than 10 percent of their African American population.

10. Studies have shown that people of color face disparities in wage trajectory following release from prison. Evidence shows that spending time in prison affects wage trajectories with a disproportionate impact on black men and women. The results show no evidence of racial divergence in wages prior to incarceration; however, following release from prison, wages grow at a 21 percent slower rate for black former inmates compared to white ex-convicts. A number of states have bans on people with certain convictions working in domestic health-service industries such as nursing, child care, and home health care—areas in which many poor women and women of color are disproportionately concentrated.

Theses racial disparities have deprived people of color of their most basic civil rights, making criminal-justice reform the civil rights issue of our time. Through mass imprisonment and the overrepresentation of individuals of color within the criminal justice and prison system, people of color have experienced an adverse impact on themselves and on their communities from barriers to reintegrating into society to engaging in the democratic process. Eliminating the racial disparities inherent to our nation’s criminal-justice policies and practices must be at the heart of a renewed, refocused, and reenergized movement for racial justice in America.

There have been a number of initiatives on the state and federal level to address the racial disparities in youth incarceration. Last summer Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the Schools Discipline Initiative to bring increased awareness of effective policies and practices to ultimately dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. States like California and Massachusetts are considering legislation to address the disproportionate suspensions among students of color. And in Clayton County, Georgia, collaborative local reforms have resulted in a 47 percent reduction in juvenile-court referrals and a 51 percent decrease in juvenile felony rates. These initiatives could serve as models of success for lessening the disparities in incarceration rates.

Sophia Kerby is the Special Assistant for Progress 2050 at American Progress.

WHY THE ELITE NEED TO KEEP US POOR - JOHN TRUDELL 1992

John foresaw what's happening today way back in 1992. The only way to control the political power of the baby boomers was to keep them in poverty. Recorded two weeks after Clinton's first presidential victory. Also covered - The Jonestown massacre was mass murder perpetrated by the government? the shadow government? to undermine the growth of political power blocs that they could not control (recall what happened recently to ACORN). An important lecture for anyone who is studying John's work or who is concerned about the very alarming situation we're in today. 

For up to date info, join the free e-mail list at www.johntrudell.com.

Occupy Wall Street Testimony #1: Eddie Pages

Occupy Wall Street Testimony #1 from Eddie Pages on Vimeo.

You will also like this video of his!

No To SB1070! from Eddie Pages on Vimeo.

Predatory Lending: Wall Street Profited, Minority Families Paid the Price

Predatory Lending: Wall Street Profited, Minority Families Paid the Price - ACLU

The editorial page of the New York Times recently weighed in on an important but underappreciated aspect of the financial crisis: The systematic targeting of communities of color for risky and unfair loans. As the Times put it:

Pricing discrimination — illegally charging minority customers more for loans and other services than similarly qualified whites are charged — is a longstanding problem. It grew to outrageous proportions during the bubble years. Studies by consumer advocates found that large numbers of minority borrowers who were eligible for affordable, traditional loans were routinely steered toward ruinously priced subprime loans that they would never be able to repay.

Rampant lending discrimination during the housing bubble exposed black and Latino communities to the harshest consequences of the economic crisis. The link between race, subprime lending, and devastating rates of foreclosure has been crystal clear for some time. Researches at Princeton have found, for example, that "the greater the degree of Hispanic and especially black segregation a metropolitan area exhibits, the higher the number and rate of foreclosures it experiences." That same study found that these disparities are due in large part to the disproportionate chance that minority borrowers will receive subprime loans.

As a result, minority families have absorbed a crushing blow from the collapse of the housing market, and the larger economic crisis. According to the Pew Research Center, the median wealth of white households has grown to 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households. These inequalities, moreover, reinforce themselves over the course of generations.

As discussed in a very incisive two-part series that aired today and Thursday on National Public Radio, wealth gaps reproduce themselves as each generation enjoys advantages (or lack thereof) inherited from generation-to-generation. This means that the current racial wealth gaps beget future racial inequality. "Study after study," NPR reported, "shows that white families are more likely than blacks and Hispanics to enjoy certain economic advantages — even when their incomes are similar." The result is an uneven playing field and structural inequality. This is why discriminatory lending is so pernicious. Exposing minority communities to disproportionate rates of foreclosure means that the cornerstone of economic stability and growth for families and communities — home-ownership — simply evaporates.

For all these reasons, the Times is exactly right: Lenders who engaged in such practices should face vigorous enforcement of civil rights law.

But the predatory lenders were only part of the story. Wall Street banks that bundled those mortgages for investors deserve much of the blame. Their nearly insatiable appetite for subprime loans to package and sell on the securities market encouraged lenders to maximize volume at all costs — including by peddling loans with abusive terms and an elevated risk of ending in foreclosure. By signaling its willingness to buy up enormous quantities of subprime loans, Wall Street set the stage for an upsurge in discriminatory lending strategies. Conventional lenders had historically not set up shop in communities of color, so subprime specialists could flood those communities without competing with institutions offering standard loan products. Put simply, Wall Street created a system of incentives in which businesses built on discrimination could flourish.

There is a direct line connecting Wall Street to the discriminatory lenders who caused so much damage to communities of color. Many of the worst lenders folded when the housing bubble burst, but their enablers in the securities market mostly remain in business. The harm they caused will run deep and threatens to exacerbate existing racial disparities, damage that may play out over the course of generations. The response, therefore, must address all of the actors who contributed to discriminatory lending. Going forward, fair lending rules must ensure that Wall Street pays a price when it makes discrimination profitable.

Poverty Levels in 2010 Reach 52-Year Peak, U.S. Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html

NYT - September 13, 2011 - SABRINA TAVERNISE
Poverty Levels in 2010 Reach 52-Year Peak, U.S. Says

WASHINGTON — Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.

Economists seized on a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that the median American household had a lower income, adjusted for inflation, than 13 years earlier, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University.

“This is truly a lost decade,” Professor Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

The bureau’s findings were worse than many economists expected, and brought into sharp relief the toll the past decade — including the sharp declines of the financial crisis and recession —had taken on Americans at the middle and lower parts of the income ladder.

The report comes as President Obama gears up to try to pass a jobs bill, and analysts said the bleak numbers could help him make his case for urgency. But they could also be used against him by Republican opponents seeking to highlight economic shortcomings on his watch as the election season gets under way.

“This is one more piece of bad news on the economy,” said Ron Haskins, a director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. “This will be another cross to bear by the administration.”

The past decade was also marked by a growing gap between the very top and very bottom of the income ladder. Median household income for the bottom tenth of the income spectrum fell by 12 percent from a peak in 1999, while the top 90th percentile dropped by just 1.5 percent.

The census report said that the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line last year, 15.1 percent, was the highest level since 1993 (the poverty line in 2010 for a family of four was $22,314).

And this year is not likely to be any better, economists said. Stimulus money has largely ended, and state and local governments have made deep cuts to staff and to budgets for social programs, both likely to move economically fragile families closer to poverty.

Minorities were hit hardest. Blacks experienced the highest poverty rate, at 27 percent, up from 25 percent in 2009, and Hispanics rose to 26 percent from 25 percent. For whites, 9.9 percent lived in poverty, up from 9.4 percent in 2009. Asians were unchanged at 12.1 percent. ...

See also:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2011/09/our-lost-decade.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+EconomistsView+(Economist's+View+(EconomistsView)) and the excellent commentary

Real corporate profits per employee doubled starting in 2000 and hasn't returned to the historical norm:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=P6

Group Alleges University of Wisconsin's Diversity Policies are "Discriminatory;" Protesters Take Over Press Conference | Center for Media and Democracy

Group Alleges University of Wisconsin's Diversity Policies are "Discriminatory;" Protesters Take Over Press Conference | Center for Media and Democracy

Submitted by Brendan Fischer on September 13, 2011 - 3:28pm

MADISON -- The University of Wisconsin-Madison's race-conscious admissions policies amount to "severe racial discrimination," announced Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) president Roger Clegg at a press conference Tuesday. As the event concluded, supporters of the university's diversity policies took over the conference room, and beneficiaries of the diversity policies Clegg attacked shared their experiences.

Group Alleges Discrimination Against Whites

CEO's Roger CleggAt the press conference, Clegg announced the results of two CEO reports studying race-based data for undergraduate and law schools admissions at UW-Madison, Wisconsin's flagship public university. The organization has performed dozens of similar studies at other universities, and according to Clegg, UW-Madison's "admission discrimination" favoring minority students over white students is the "worst . . . of all schools" the organization has studied.

During the 2010-2011 school year, 30,977 white undergraduate students attended UW-Madison, alongside 1,079 African-American students and 1,586 Latino students.

Glegg said that, when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker considers appointments to the university's Board of Regents, "the Governor should consider . . . whether [the candidate] supports this form of discrimination." Governor Walker took office in January of this year. The data used in the report was from 2007 and 2008; Gregg denied that the organization delayed the study's release until a school year began with a sympathetic governor in place.

CEO, which has received Koch funding, compared the test scores and class rank of admitted students by race, and developed an odds ratio which Clegg said favored African-American and Hispanic applicants over whites (576-to-1 and 504-to-1, respectively). "It is untenable for a public institution to sort people based on skin color or country of ancestry," he said.

Study's Methodology Called Into Question

When asked whether CEO took into account the "subjective criteria" universities consider in admissions to create a desirable academic environment, Clegg replied "it was certainly true that we did not consider that" in developing the odds ratio. He stated he had "no reason to believe" that students of color would score better on subjective criteria than white students.

Clegg was also questioned about whether the study might be made more accurate by comparing the scores and grades of those students who were "displaced" with those of the minority students who were admitted, rather than comparing the numbers for admitted students of color with the white student body as a whole. "Isn't this a better comparison?," he was asked.

"I think the numbers speak for themselves," Clegg replied, as he moved on to the next question.

For some, Clegg's allegations were personal.

"I've busted my ass to get here," an African-American student told Clegg, choking back tears. "I've done everything right. . . You're acting as if these policies are a national epidemic," she said, when there are more pressing issues to worry about. "Can't you spend your time doing something else?"

Protesters Enter Conference Room

As the press conference wound down, the chants of protesters outside the room grew louder. "We're more than our scores!" and "power to the people" could be heard. As press conference attendees departed, a multi-racial group of student protesters entered. Clegg quickly left the room.

"As long as we're here, we may as well hold our own press conference," said UW-Madison student C.J. Terrell as he stepped behind the podium. "I feel like a professor. And hopefully, if I do become a professor one day, my class will look a lot like this," he said, motioning to the diverse group of student protesters who had taken seats in front of him.

One-by-one, students took the podium to share their stories and to denounce what they perceived as Clegg's attack on students of color.

African-American student Daylon Cunningham cited the importance of diversity policies for the next generation, saying he knows his "thirteen nieces and nephews need extra support, because I know they live in a society that discriminates against them. . . would [Clegg] look [them] in the eye and tell them not to dream to become a doctor or a lawyer?"

First They Came for the Labor Unions ...

"Everyone is getting attacked at once," said Terrell, citing Governor Walker's effort earlier this year to limit collective bargaining rights for public employees.

The connection between the attack on unions and the attack on diversity policies may not be remote. CEO Chair Linda Chavez, nominated in 2001 by President George W. Bush to be Secretary of Labor, has written favorably about Walker's union-busting plans. CEO is also funded by many of the same organizations bankrolling anti-union forces: it was founded with a grant from the Olin Foundation, and in addition to Koch funding, has received grants from the Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

Clegg is scheduled to speak at Union South's Varsity Hall at 7pm this evening, and students are planning aprotest starting at 6pm on the University's Bascom Hill.

A student who identified himself as Marcelo said "today at 6pm I'll be there . . . but now I have to go to class."

America's massive racial wealth gap

INSTANT GUIDE
America's massive racial wealth gap 
White familes did poorly in the Great Recession, but the numbers are dramatically bleaker for black and Hispanic households  

POSTED ON JULY 27, 2011, AT 10:26 AM


Homeowners wait in line for a foreclosure prevention seminar in Florida: 
The Great Recession has turned the wealth gap between white and black 
families into a gaping chasm.
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

SEE ALL 61 PHOTOS

The Great Recession afflicted much of America, but it hit some demographics harder than others. The Pew Research Center scrutinized the net wealth of different racial groups in 2005 and 2009, and found that the financial gap between whites and minorities has become increasingly "lopsided" (a "colossal understatement" on Pew's part, says Brian O'Connell at TIME). Pew adds that the wealth divide between white families and black and Hispanic households is bigger now than at any time since the Census Bureau began tracking such data by race in 1984. What's going on in America? Here, a brief guide


:Exactly how big is the wealth difference?White households were about 20 times wealthier than black ones in 2009, and 18 times wealthier than Hispanic ones. Every group's income fell between 2005 and 2009, but Hispanics' inflation-adjusted median wealth plummeted 66 percent, versus 53 percent among blacks, 54 percent among Asians, and just 16 percent among whites. As a result, the average white household had a net worth of $113,149 in 2009, a black household had $5,677, a Hispanic one, $6,325, and the average Asian household, $78,066. About a third of black and Hispanic households has zero or negative worth, versus 15 percent for whites.


How big did the gap used to be?In 1984, white households were 12 times wealthier than black households, and eight times wealthier than Hispanic ones. The gap was narrowest in 1995, when white households were only seven times wealthier than black and Latino ones. 


How does Pew define wealth?It looks at a household's assets (houses, cars, bank accounts, stocks and other investments, and retirement accounts) minus its debts (mortgages, car and student loans, credit card debt, etc.). Measuring wealth this way "can give a fuller picture of financial status than simply relying on household income," says Natasha Lennard at Salon. And since wealth can be passed on, while annual income can't, this inequality will probably only grow with time.




Why have whites fared so much better?"The bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites," the Pew study says. The housing implosion was especially hard on Hispanics, since a disproportionate number of them are concentrated in states like Florida, California, Arizona, and Nevada, where the housing boom and subsequent bust were especially dramatic. White households also have more diversified assets, including 401(k)s and IRAs, while blacks and Hispanics had more of their net worth in their homes. Since the stock market has bounced back since 2009 while the housing market is still weak, the wealth gap has already probably widened even more from its 2009 record, Pew says.


Sources: Business Insider, Daily Kos, Jack & Jill Politics, Mediaite, New York Times

National Lawyers Guild's Campaign for Economic Justice

video - TO MAKE GO VIRAL! C.J.Terrell on redistricting

C.J. Terrell, one of the main faces of the Capitol protests, speaks the truth about the insane Republican voter disenfranchisement (redistricting). This was during a meaningless public 'hearing' that the GOP held on July 13, 2011.