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Reposted from the Nando News site, 

http://152.52.2.152/newsroom/ntn/nation/021396/nation1_11602.html

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Young black men in prison at far higher rate than whites

Copyright � 1996 Nando.net
Copyright � 1996 Scripps-McClatchy Western 

SAN FRANCISCO (Feb 13, 1996 01:11 a.m. EST) -- Nearly 40 percent of all
California's black men in their 20s were imprisoned, on probation or on parole
last year, nearly eight times the rate for their white counterparts, a study
released Monday says.

Only 5 percent of the state's white men in their 20s and 11 percent of its
young Latino men of that age group were in the criminal system last year, said
the report by the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice, a
nonprofit policy group.

The state increased the rate at which it held young black men in its criminal
justice system to four of every 10 from 1990, when it held 33 percent, or one
in three, the study said.

As a result, California continues to maintain about 20 percent more of its
young black men in its criminal justice system than the country does overall.
The national average rate for the same group rose from 25 percent in 1990 to
33 percent in 1995, the report said.

The study's authors attributed some of the disparity to a "heightened level of
criminality in the African American community," which they said was due partly
to poverty, job scarcity, poor education and racism.

But the wide variations in sentencing data overwhelmingly show that "black men
simply do not get a fair shake at the hands of California's system of
justice," they said.

For example, the study noted that a far higher rate of young black men who are
arrested wind up in prison than do whites.

The report called for far-reaching action on the state's criminal justice
system:

A moratorium on state prison construction and legislation that enhances
current criminal penalties, like the "three strikes" law.

A commission to "completely overhaul" the state's sentencing code and to
reaffirm the goal of rehabilitation.

A law to give counties funds to develop drug treatment on demand.

Rory Little, a professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and a
former federal prosecutor, called the 40 percent figure "stunning." He agreed
with the report that the state has too many "enhancement" bills and that its
sentencing laws should be reviewed. More crime could be stopped if more money
was spent for child care and education for children under age 15, he said.

But Little said the state needs enough prisons to hold violent offenders,
adding, "I don't think the answer is just to stop building prisons now."

The study also found that the rate at which the state imprisons African
American women in their 20s for drug-related crimes increased 18-fold from
1984 to 1994. In the same period, the rate for white women in their 20s
increased only 10-fold, it said.

In 1995, 3 percent of the state's African American women in their 20s were
imprisoned, on parole or on probation, it said. Only 0.5 percent of their
white counterparts were similarly under control of the criminal justice
system, it said.

The data show that the African American community's experience is increasingly
shaped by its contact with the criminal justice system, part of a widening
"chasm between blacks and whites over the fairness of the criminal justice
system," the report said.

More than five times as many young African American men are in the criminal
justice system than black men of all ages are in four-year colleges, the study
said. And this year, the state for the first time will spend more on
corrections than on higher education, it said.

Their different experiences with the criminal justice system may explain why
blacks and whites viewed the O.J. Simpson case so differently, the authors
said.

The report, titled "Young African Americans and California's Criminal Justice
System: Five Years Later," was written by Vincent Schiraldi, Sue Kuyper and
Sharen Hewitt of the center. It was based on official state data.

Alex Pitcher, president of the San Francisco chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said, "This is a very
serious matter, because in one way or another it affects all the citizens."

(From the San Francisco Examiner, distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western
Service.)