The Sentencing Project releases latest report on racial disparities, “One in Five: Disparities in Crime and Policing”
As noted in this post last month, The Sentencing Project has announced that it is “producing a series of four reports examining both the narrowing and persistence of racial injustice in the criminal legal system, as well as highlighting promising reforms.” Today, The Sentencing Project released this latest report in this series, the second I believe, titled “One in Five: Disparities in Crime and Policing.” Here is part of the report’s executive summary:
As noted in the first installment of this One in Five series, scholars have declared a “generational shift” in the lifetime likelihood of imprisonment for Black men, from a staggering one in three for those born in 1981 to a still troubling one in five for Black men born in 2001….
This report interrogates the large footprint of policing — particularly of Black Americans— as, in part, a failed response to racial disparities in serious crimes. The wide net that police cast across people of color is at odds with advancing safety because excessive police contact often fails to intercept serious criminal activity and diminishes the perceived legitimacy of law enforcement. Excessive policing also distracts policymakers from making investments to promote community safety without the harms of policing and incarceration. In addition, the large footprint of policing gets in the way of, as the National Academies of Sciences has called for, needed “durable investments in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods that match the persistent and longstanding nature of institutional disinvestment that such neighborhoods have endured over many years.”…
Ending racial inequity in the criminal legal system requires both effectively tackling disparities in serious criminal behavior and eliminating excessive police contact. The subsequent installments of this One in Five series will examine additional drivers of disparity from within the criminal legal system and highlight promising reforms from dozens of jurisdictions around the country.
Prior recent related post: