Where we used to be about eight times more likely than white people to end up incarcerated, black people now only end up imprisoned about five times more frequently than their white counterparts, according to a report the Council on Criminal Justice released Tuesday based on data from 2000 to 2016. Apparently, that’s something to celebrate. I’ll go ahead and hold off, though, because researchers also noted in the report that racial disparities would have decreased even more if black offenders hadn’t handed down tougher sentences for violent crimes than whites.
If a certain white ex-Dallas cop doesn’t come to mind, she should. Amber Guyger was found guilty of murder after she walked into the apartment of 26-year-old Botham Jean, apparently mistaking his unit for hers, and fatally shot and killed the accountant Sept. 6, 2018. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Guyger received credit for time served and will be eligible for parole in September 2024.
Meanwhile, Rodney Reed, a black man, had to fight for his life after an all-white jury sentenced him to death in prison for a 1996 murder another man allegedly confessed to later, according to legal documents provided by the Innocence Project. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Reed an “indefinite stay of execution” Nov. 15, but please don’t doubt for one second that he is still sitting in jail for the strangling death of Stacey Stites, a white woman.
So, yeah. I’m less optimistic than others about findings in the Council on Criminal Justice report. Cynicism aside, though, the results are indicators of some progress. William Sabol, a criminal justice professor at Georgia State University and the report’s principal author, attributed that progress to a drop in arrest rates for drugs and a decline in reported offending rates for violence. While black and white disparities have dropped across all major crime arrest categories, the largest drop was in drug offenses, the report showed. Black people were imprisoned for drug crimes at 15 times the rate of whites in 2000, and by 2016, that ratio had dropped to less than 5-to-1.
The drop was even more drastic for black women, who were imprisoned at a rate of 2-to-1 when compared with white women, the study showed. That’s down from a ratio of 6-to-1. The drop for black men when compared to white men only fell from about 9-to-1 to 6-to-1, the study showed. “This report moves us closer to understanding more precisely what’s behind racial disparities and to identifying strategies that can increase fairness and equity across the system,” said Council on Criminal Justice president Adam Gelb in a news release. “Officials, researchers and advocates should replicate this type of analysis at the state and local levels to better diagnose and tackle what’s working and what’s not in their jurisdictions.”
Although the numbers point to correlation and not causation, if I had to venture a guess about why the racial divide narrowed between black people and white people, it would start with media pressure that civil rights advocates and criminal reform activists put on politicians. It has become cool to care about criminal justice reform, as evidenced by the popularity of the Netflix series Orange is the New Black, the widespread influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the controversy ignited when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee three years ago to protest police brutality and social injustice.
At least two top Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have vowed to legalize marijuana, according to their campaign websites. Sanders even promised to do so in his first 100 days as president with an executive action. But as long as President Donald Trump is in office, let’s hope progressive prosecutors such as Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner and Cook County, Illinois, state’s attorney Kim Foxx, who is up for reelection, will usher us into the next realm of progress.