Pubdate: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 Source: Miami Herald (FL) Copyright: 2007 The Miami Herald Contact: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262 Author: Andrea Robinson Referenced: the report http://drugsense.org/url/21uS48TR Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?244 (Sentencing - United States) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Justice+Policy+Institute RACIAL BIAS FOUND IN JAIL RATES Black defendants in Broward County are 10 times as likely to be incarcerated for a drug offense as white defendants, although drug usage rates by the two groups are basically the same. The disparity is even greater for blacks in Sarasota County, where they are 37 times as likely to go to prison as whites. That is the assessment of a report released Tuesday by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit public policy outfit that works to end the reliance on incarceration. The report, which examines racial disparities and the rate at which people are admitted to prison for drug offenses, addresses the issue at the county level, its authors say. "We have at least two different drug policies in this country, one that affects white people and one that affects people of color," said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director at the Justice Policy Institute. "The policies that are for people of color are more punitive than are those for whites." In the report of 198 of the largest counties in the country, 97 percent had racial disparities in their drug imprisonment rates. The report contains data from 17 Florida counties, including Palm Beach, Pinellas and Orange. In those counties, blacks were 18, 14 and 10 times more likely, respectively, to be incarcerated than whites. The researchers said data for Miami-Dade County were unavailable at the time of their analysis. The county with the nation's highest disparity in drug admission rates is Forsyth, N.C., where blacks are 164 times as likely as whites to go to prison. Sarasota County ranked 14th, the highest of the Florida counties. No one from the state attorney's office in Sarasota County returned calls for comment on the report. Overall, most of Florida's counties were in the lower half of the nation's rankings. Broward came in 127th and Orange ranked 130th. Polk County ranked lowest at 185th. As of 2003, the most recent figures available when the report was written, twice as many blacks as whites nationwide went to state prisons on drug offenses. Complex Issue Broward state attorney's office spokesman Ron Ishoy said incarceration rates are a more complex societal issue than the report suggests, and that disparities can be affected by many variables. Jeff Marcus, chief of the department's felonies division, said the report did not provide enough information to make an accurate assessment, such as a defendant's prior record and specific drug offense. "There's other factors that have to be looked into," Marcus said. Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said he was not surprised at the national figures. "When you add the fact that law enforcement targets its resources in a poor community, [which is] by and large a minority community, coupled with a judiciary, which is by and large white and not filled with African Americans, it will yield tougher sentences," Finkelstein said. Marsha Ellison, president of the Fort Lauderdale NAACP, said blacks are less likely to be offered diversion programs where defendants avoid a criminal record. 'We're just going to jail. We do not pass 'Go.' We go directly to jail," she said. The report looks at information from a number of sources to calculate county-level admission rates to state prisons for persons convicted of drug offenses. The analysis does not take into account the length of sentences nor the type of drug involved. Data was taken from the U.S. Justice Department, Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Racial Disparities Researchers found that 97 percent of the counties in the report have racial disparities for persons who are sent to prison on drug offenses. Amanda Petteruti, co-author of the report, noted that counties with higher poverty rates and those that spend the greatest amount on law enforcement are more likely to imprison drug offenders. The report does not offer recommendations to counties. Authors suggest policymakers consider reforming drug policies, including de-escalation of the drug war in the black community. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake