Should criminal justice reform be the new civil rights movement?

From my sentencing-centric perspective, reflecting on a day honoring Martin Luther King leads me to the view that Dr. King, were he still alive, would be focused on criminal justice reforms.  So many aspects of the criminal justice system — from racial profiling to jury selection, from drug sentencing to the administration of the death penalty — highlight that our system is not color-blind (or at least not color-neutral).  And, because of felon disenfranchisement and other collateral consequences, the enduring impact of a racially skewed criminal justice system cannot be overstated.

Of course, we have come a long way from Scottsboro (background here and here and here).  Nevertheless, potent report on racial inequities from The Sentencing Project (available here and here) and the posts linked below all highlight that we still clearly have a long way to go:

• Sobering realities of race and the death penalty
• New California study on race and death penalty
• Race and reform
• Racial disparity and sentencing reform
• New (depressing) report on race and increased incarceration
• Drugs and racial discrimination
• A call for USSC to focus on racial disparity
• Fascinating and sobering evidence of sentencing discrimination
• Race, mandatories, discretion and activism in Arizona

UPDATE:  Providing a fitting follow-up, Scott at Grits for Breakfast has this interesting post in which he details why "empirically," criminal justice is already a major focus at least of Texas' civil rights movement."

ANOTHER UPDATE: On this theme, a terrific North Carolina lawyer has forwarded to me a cert. petition, which I have made available for download below, that he recently filed in the NC Supreme Court assailing a sentence imposed by a judge who has repeatedly stated her view at sentencing that the commission of a crime by an African American defendant "disrespects " the civil rights movement and the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King.  In the lawyer's words, "It is a world gone mad in criminal sentencing for a judge to consider as an aggravating factor for sentencing that a defendant is black, in supposed respect to the memory of Martin Luther King!!"

Download sentencing_cert_pet_ncsc.doc