By Marty L. Bryant / Stanley

    The multifaceted prejudices in this country’s criminal justice system and the interconnectedness of inequities therein are coming under a microscope – again. Daunting are not only the facts and stats, but also the diverse emotions around how perceived and factual wrongs should be righted. The NAACP is shedding fresh light on biases that historically manifest in unjust treatment toward African Americans, especially in the legal arena. The goal of the rights organization is to dismantle systematic and institutional racism which result in blacks being unequally victimized by racial profiling.

    In Chattanooga-Hamilton County, TN, the NAACP put on its first Annual Criminal Justice Seminar. There, Executive Director Beverly L. Watts of the Tennessee Human Rights Commission talked about some prevalent forms of racial profiling. For example, Watts mentioned the ‘Driving While Black’ syndrome; the one black folks amusedly and angrily bandy about. She noted the frequency with which African American motorists are pulled over by police who provide no seeming rationale for the stop. “Maybe she or he was in the wrong neighborhood. Maybe there were three adult black males in the vehicle and so police naturally suspect wrongdoing,” she explained.

    Criminal injustice, for Watts, doesn’t stop at the police department. “We have to develop stronger community linkages and interactions between citizens and service agencies that deal with fair housing, education, voting, employment, and every area where injustices exist.”  She added, “And that’s everywhere.”

    However, she is pressing for inmates who’ve served their terms to have their civil rights restored. At this provocative time in political history, at the top of her and the NAACP’s agenda, is helping freed, qualifying felons to be able to vote. The organization is strategizing across America to pressure state legislatures and the courts to participate in policy making that addresses felons registering or reregistering. NAACP calls this ‘ensuring felony re-entry.’  It speaks to released felons having access to appropriate voting, education and job training resources and to assess concerns such as parole regulations, individual criminal histories and recidivism factors.

    A surface overview of ‘released felons voting’ may seem unrelated to racial profiling and criminal injustice.  Let us track the steps leading to the conclusion of an easily digestible truth:   blacks are arrested, convicted, sentenced then incarcerated in numbers disproportionate to the African American population, and then way-heavy in comparison to whites.

    Some startling but well-known facts include: blacks represent 12% of the population, yet represent 29.5% of all arrests. Once arrested, blacks are three times more likely to be incarcerated than whites. And, 54% of blacks, but 50% of whites return to prison after 3 years. Of 682 defendants charged with federal crimes subject to the death penalty, 20% were white and 80% minority. This, from The Sentencing Project 2006: A Decade of Reform; and Death Penalty Information Center 2006.

The Sentencing Project 2006 also gives statistics on the impact on voting.  Nationally, 1 in 8 African American males are prohibited from voting, reaching as high as 1 in 4 in some states. Since 1997, 16 states have implemented reforms to their felony disenfranchisement policies. These reforms have resulted in the restoration of voting rights to an estimated 621,400 persons. In 2004, 1 in 12 African Americans was disenfranchised because of a felony conviction; a rate nearly five times that of non-African Americans.

    It is tough to summon heartfelt concern for anyone convicted of, say, murder and rape. Or for burglars and robbers where the victim’s last breath is stolen by a thug or some crazed killer.  How much compassion can you offer drug traffickers who poison children and provide undisciplined grownups with products to poison themselves? How often is society left to care for the families abandoned by not-too-smart street dealers who go behind bars for dabbling in dope-head lifestyles?

    Friends, isn't it still right to insist that when arrests do occur, that all people be treated equally? That when sentences are dispersed, they follow the book, matching the severity of the crime? And shouldn’t even the boldest black offender receive the same justice meted out to a white offender when their histories and their convictions are the same? Why should powder cocaine cost less jail time than crack cocaine? When people choose illegal behaviors then get busted … shouldn’t all criminals be penalized … only, equally? From this perspective, it's reasonable to demand equality across the board.

    The NAACP’s target of elimination of capricious racial profiling practices is designed to: identify and monitor practices and polices which lead to unscientific use of race and ethnicity in police and investigative actions. Criminal justice – rather than criminal injustice – would also mean equity in arrest, interrogation, pre-sentencing, jury selection, discovery, trial, sentencing and appeal phases. And black juveniles must be appropriately protected and rehabilitated. The overall NAACP goal is to ensure that place a moratorium on the utilization of capital punishment, until race and ethnicity are no longer statistically significant in predicting sentencing and execution.    

    The NAACP is advocating that state and local stop-and-arrest monitoring programs be established; that trial monitoring become part of court hearings; and that docket monitoring systems be put into place. Partnerships are being stabilized, or developed in some cases, with the Bureau of Justice Statistics; the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Services, the National Bar Association and an already effective research and monitoring outfit known as the Sentencing Project.  Add to that the African American Ministers Leadership Council, the Northwestern Center for Wrongful Convictions and, of course, the American Civil Liberties Union.
     
    Finally, awash in pages of criminal justice stats, I am compelled to share discouraging education statistics: 35% of black children 7-12 have been suspended or expelled at some point in their school careers compared to 20% of Hispanics and 15% of whites. However, I must debunk the great myth: There are more, black college-age males in prison than in college. NOT! The fact is there are more black males in college than in prison. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2005, there were 530,000 black males age 18-24 in college; that same year there were 193,000 black males age 18-24 in prison. Motivate somebody with that tidbit of great news.