OPINION & EDITORIAL
Prison disparity racist? Not so fast
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Also by Jack Craver:
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- Obama: Visionary, not fraudulent (September 19, 2007)
- Obama's charisma essential to victory (January 29, 2007)
by Jack Craver
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
With Barack Obama on the possible edge of victory today,
Wisconsin voters may demonstrate that race no longer holds such sway over the
citizenry’s judgment.
Nevertheless, a large portion of black America is missing
out on his version of the American Dream. For them, freedom is viewed from afar,
behind steel bars.
Wisconsin shamefully imprisons a significant portion of its
black population. In fact, blacks in Wisconsin are imprisoned at 13 times the
rate of whites. One out of 14 adult black men in our state is currently
incarcerated, a rate bested only by Iowa, Oklahoma and the District of Columbia.
Black males have it worst in Dane County, where they are more than 33 times as
likely as white males to be sent to jail.
An easy explanation for this phenomenon would be racism.
After all, the disparities in sentencing between blacks and whites are
significant enough to make such an allegation. A study done by the Wisconsin
Sentencing Commission revealed that while 61 percent of Hispanics and 60
percent of blacks received prison sentences for mid-level drug offenses — such
as the sale of 10,000 grams of marijuana or five to 15 grams of cocaine — only
30 percent of whites convicted of the same crimes were put behind bars.
It would be hard to argue that tribalism did not play at
least some role in creating such huge margins of justice. Just like how yuppie
moms eagerly tip the college kids at Starbucks who serve them their coffee but
do not consider tipping the immigrant who rings them up at the Seven Eleven,
judges and prosecutors sympathize with those juveniles who remind them of their
own children.
But this conclusion is too simplistic. Why would Wisconsin’s
justice system be more discriminatory than that of other states?
The truth is not that Wisconsin’s penal system is
discriminatory, but that it is fundamentally flawed at all levels. Our state
simply imprisons more offenders than it needs to, with poor inner-city
communities bearing the brunt of the effects.
The main culprits are not those who enforce the law, but
those who write it. According to Ken Streit, a UW law professor who specializes
in sentencing statistics, the Legislature — with the support of then-Gov. Tommy
Thompson — decided during the 1980s to exempt crime bills from typical fiscal
estimates that accompany all other types of legislation. Simply put, this meant
legislators could revise the criminal code in any way they wanted, including
mandating prison sentences for crimes, without ever having to explain the costs
to the voters who would be footing the bill.
Having successfully eliminated the inconvenient issue of
money from the equation, Wisconsin legislators did what officeholders do best:
politically posture at the expense of the citizenry. Their first move was to
build more prisons. According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan
political watchdog, the state has constructed eight new prisons since 1995,
spending $410.5 million in the process. Predictably, as of 2002, the last three
governors had accepted more than $2.42 million combined in campaign
contributions from prison contractors.
The next step was to provide the prisons with prisoners,
which the state approached enthusiastically. By increasing maximum sentences,
abolishing parole and eliminating the distinction between, for instance,
aggravated assault (very violent) and non-aggravated assault (not so violent),
Wisconsin increased its prison population by 91 percent between 1992 and 2002,
according the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Politicians were delighted, prison contractors were richer,
but unfortunately, the taxpayers were stuck paying for a plan that did not keep
them any safer. In fact, Wisconsin, despite imprisoning three times as many
offenders as the similarly populated state of Minnesota, maintained a virtually
identical crime rate with its western neighbor.
The problem was perpetuated at the local level as well. E.
Michael McCann, Milwaukee’s district attorney from 1966 to 2007, had a policy
of recommending prison sentences for any drug conviction, no matter how minor
the charges, according to UW sociology professor Pamela Oliver.
While that policy and others like it are not intended to
discriminate, they inevitably hit concentrated areas of poverty and
unemployment the hardest.
Furthermore, because alternative sentencing programs are
generally run at the county level, it is the poor areas of Wisconsin that are
most often lacking basic drug and alcohol rehab for offenders. As Mr. Streit
explained, this is partly why Milwaukee judges send felons directly to prison
at more than twice the rate as in some other parts of the state.
Thus, the poor in Wisconsin are kept in jail and out of
school, college, employment and most importantly, the home. In Dane County
alone, more than 1,600 children have a parent incarcerated. In fact,
Wisconsin’s prisons are so overcrowded that the state has begun exporting
prisoners to other states. This can hardly be called “rehabilitation,” and it
can very easily be seen as destructive to Wisconsin communities — especially
those with large black populations.
The Doyle administration has stated its desire to reduce racial sentencing disparities. Hopefully that goal will be achieved by sending more Wisconsinites — especially blacks — back to their communities and families, instead of simply building more prisons in which to put more whites.
Jack Craver (craver@wisc.edu)
is a sophomore majoring in history.
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 9:05am):
What percentage of blacks are in prison for crimes where the victim was black?
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 11:13am):
You should have spoken to Professor Pam Oliver before writing this. Starting with the title (which admittedly doesn't reflect the basis of your argument), prison disparity is based on race lines. That black and latino males are up to 33 times more likely to go to jail than whites, and that racial minorities are more likely to be convicted and sent to jail than whites even though whites and blacks commit crimes at the same rates (i.e. white kids will more likely get probation while black kids get jail time, even for the same crime)--these are the markings of a racist system. I don't mean to imply that all judges are burdened with personal prejudices (although as you pointed out, predominantly white justices will see their own children in white defendants). Instead, the economic and social fabric of our society is overwhelmingly biased against blacks. Milwaukee is insanely segregated, and plagued by unemployment especially in minority neighborhoods (Sudhir Venkatesh's book American Project helps explain why jobs leave). So part of fixing the problem clearly is desegregation, economic expansion into segregated and poor neighborhoods, but also ending hypocrisy about drug laws, such that cocaine and crack use are treated differently.
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 11:23am):
Oh, c'mon... did you really have to open your column by trying to subtly guilt-trip your readers into voting for Barack? Shameless.
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 1:30pm):
11:13,
Did you even read the column? Pam Oliver was quoted in the article!
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 1:44pm):
"they are more than 33 times as likely as white males to be sent to jail"
Do these numbers take into account the persons previous criminal record?
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 3:34pm):
Why would you write an article like this without consulting Professor Oliver in the sociology department? She's widely considered the leading expert on the subject, and she could tell you very clearly and with detailed evidence why the disparity IS racist.
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 6:32pm):
From 11:13-- my bad, I read it quickly. But she really is only mentioned in passing, when she is widely regarded as an expert, being appointed to governor's commissions and probably able to teach a semester-long class just on disparities in the Wisconsin legal system. She could also probably shoot down the author's opinion in 3 seconds flat.
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 6:34pm):
"Do these numbers take into account the persons previous criminal record?"
Yes. In fact, in soc 134 last semester, we learned that blacks are about four times as likely as whites to go to prison for drug crimes, even if they commit the exact same offense and have the exact same criminal record.
And whites commit more drug crimes than blacks.
Anonymous (February 20, 2008 @ 1:18pm):
From article:
"Prison disparity racist?"
Remember, when the politically correct use the term racist, they simply mean white Gentiles who discriminate.
It is a racial slur directed only at White Gentiles. Racist = honky, or honky-ish.
So, the translation of the quote would be: "Prison disparity honky-ish?"
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