New JPI report on racial disparities in incarceration

At a time when race and sentencing policy are entering the national political debate (details here and here), the Justice Policy Institute has produced an important new report showing the pervasiveness of racial disparities in imprisonment.  The new report, which is entitled "The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties," can be accessed at this webpage.  That webpage also provides links to an Interactive Map with associated county fact sheets, and it also has this official press release concerning the report.  Here are excerpts from the press release:

A new report released today by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) finds that 97 percent of the nation's large-population counties imprisoned African Americans at a higher rate than whites. The report documents racial disparities in the use of prison for drug offenses in 193 of the 198 counties that reported to government entities.

“The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties,” found that counties with higher poverty rates, larger African-American populations and larger police or judicial budgets imprison people for drug offenses at higher rates than counties without these characteristics. These relationships were found to be independent of whether the county actually had a higher rate of crime. (The findings for the 198 counties.)...

“The exponential removal of people of color who have substance abuse problems from their communities and into prisons undermines and destabilizes neighborhoods-- it does not make them safer,” says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Drug addiction doesn’t discriminate but our drug policies do.”   The report is being released just days before the Drug Policy Alliance hosts its 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.

I hope that this interesting and important report gets all the attention it deserves.  I also hope that all the presidential candidates get asked hard questions based on this report.  Notably, as detailed in prior posts here and here, earlier reports indicate that the state with the highest black-to-white incarceration ratio for all crimes is Iowa, so this is a very important issue in the state that gets to vote first during the early political season.

Some related posts on racial disparities in incarceration:

• The Sentencing Project's new report on prison disparities
• Examining the disconcerting realities of racial disparities
• Another strong piece about race and justice
• Should criminal justice reform be the new civil rights movement?
• Honoring MLK by asking hard questions
• The latest BJS stats on incarceration nation
• New (depressing) report on race and increased incarceration
• In the SL&P mailbag: " Unequal under Law"
• Latest FSR issue covers crack sentencing

Some related on sentencing politics:

• A retroactive litmus test on leading Democratic candidates
• Politics and the war on drugs
• Clinton and Obama, crime and punishment
• Will sentencing issues surface in the Clinton-Obama battle for black votes?
• Obama talking about serious sentencing reform