Page 57 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

The answer lies in our country’s long and troubled history of mass incarceration . The “tough on crime” movement and the politicization of criminal justice policies in the 1960s and ’70s resulted in increased policing and mandatory drug sentencing laws . The result of these policy changes is no surprise . Incarceration rates skyrocketed, increasing by more than 500 percent between 1970 and 2000 . Today the United States is the world’s leader in incarceration, with 2 .2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails . Our country has become over-reliant on incarceration, making it the usual default response to wrongdoing .
These new policies are not color blind . This rise of incarceration has fallen heavily on Black communities . The DOJ report found that the effects of Ferguson’s police and court practices are experienced disproportionately by Black people . The Report includes some startling statistics: Blacks make up 67 percent of Ferguson’s population, but from 2012 to 2014 they accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations, and 93 percent of arrests .29 Of those subjected to one of the most severe actions Ferguson imposes—actual arrest for an outstanding municipal warrant—96 percent were Black .30 The DOJ describes a phenomenon in Ferguson that is replicated in municipalities large and small across the country:
African Americans experience the harms of the racial disparities identified [in the report] as part of a comprehensive municipal justice system that, at each juncture, enforces the law more harshly against Black people than others . The disparate impact of Ferguson’s enforcement action is compounding: at each point in the enforcement process there is a higher likelihood that an African American will be subjected to harsher treatment; accordingly, as the adverse consequences imposed by Ferguson grow more and more severe, those consequences are imposed more and more disproportionately against African Americans .31
While the disparities listed in the DOJ Report are striking, they are not unusual . Nationwide, Black people are 13 percent of the general population but make up nearly 40 percent of the prison population .32 In Missouri, Black people are 12 percent of the population but 38 percent of the prison population .33 In Mr . Dawley’s home state of Ohio, Black people are 12 .5 percent of the total state population, but 44 percent of the state’s prison population .34 The disparity is even greater in Pennsylvania, where the woman incurred 26 different fees for a drug arrest; there Blacks make up 11 .5 percent of the state population but 48 percent of the prison population .35
In local towns and cities across the country, law enforcement practices have increasingly focused on generating revenue rather than protecting public safety . This emphasis on revenue, coupled
29 DOJ Report, supra note 2, at 4.
30 Id. at 5.
31 Id. at 63.
32 u.s. census Bureau, State and County QuiCkFaCtS (apr. 29, 2015), available at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/ states/00000.html; The senTencing proJecT, Facts about Prisons and People in Prisons (Jan. 2014), available at http:// sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Facts%20About%20Prisons.pdf.
33 u.s. census Bureau, Missouri QuickFacts (Apr. 22, 2015), available at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/29000. html; missouri dep’T of corr., A Profile of the Institutional and Supervised Offender Population on June 30, 2014 at 13, available at http://doc.mo.gov/Documents/publications/Offender%20Profile%20FY14.pdf.
34 u.s. census Bureau, Ohio QuickFacts (Apr. 22, 2015) available at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39000. html; ohio dep’T of rehaBiliTaTion & corr., Institution Census 2015, available at http://www.drc.ohio.gov/web/ Reports/InstitutionCensus/Institution%20Census%202015.pdf.
35 u.s. census Bureau, Pennsylvania QuickFacts (Apr. 22, 2015), available at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/ states/42000.html; Pennsylvania Dep’t of Corr., Annual Statistical Report 12 (2013), available at http://www.cor. pa.gov/Administration/Statistics/Documents/Reports/2013%20Annual%20Statistical%20Report.pdf.
Criminal Justice Reform
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