RACIAL BIAS FOUND IN JAIL RATES

Black defendants in Broward County are 10 times as likely to be
incarcerated for a drug offense as white defendants, although drug
usage rates by the two groups are basically the same.

The disparity is even greater for blacks in Sarasota County, where
they are 37 times as likely to go to prison as whites.

That is the assessment of a report released Tuesday by the Justice
Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit public policy
outfit that works to end the reliance on incarceration. The report,
which examines racial disparities and the rate at which people are
admitted to prison for drug offenses, addresses the issue at the
county level, its authors say.

"We have at least two different drug policies in this country, one
that affects white people and one that affects people of color," said
Jason Ziedenberg, executive director at the Justice Policy Institute.
"The policies that are for people of color are more punitive than are
those for whites."

In the report of 198 of the largest counties in the country, 97
percent had racial disparities in their drug imprisonment rates. The
report contains data from 17 Florida counties, including Palm Beach,
Pinellas and Orange. In those counties, blacks were 18, 14 and 10
times more likely, respectively, to be incarcerated than whites.

The researchers said data for Miami-Dade County were unavailable at
the time of their analysis.

The county with the nation's highest disparity in drug admission rates
is Forsyth, N.C., where blacks are 164 times as likely as whites to go
to prison. Sarasota County ranked 14th, the highest of the Florida
counties.

No one from the state attorney's office in Sarasota County returned
calls for comment on the report.

Overall, most of Florida's counties were in the lower half of the
nation's rankings. Broward came in 127th and Orange ranked 130th. Polk
County ranked lowest at 185th.

As of 2003, the most recent figures available when the report was
written, twice as many blacks as whites nationwide went to state
prisons on drug offenses.

Complex Issue

Broward state attorney's office spokesman Ron Ishoy said incarceration
rates are a more complex societal issue than the report suggests, and
that disparities can be affected by many variables.

Jeff Marcus, chief of the department's felonies division, said the
report did not provide enough information to make an accurate
assessment, such as a defendant's prior record and specific drug
offense. "There's other factors that have to be looked into," Marcus
said.

Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said he was not surprised
at the national figures.

"When you add the fact that law enforcement targets its resources in a
poor community, [which is] by and large a minority community, coupled
with a judiciary, which is by and large white and not filled with
African Americans, it will yield tougher sentences," Finkelstein said.

Marsha Ellison, president of the Fort Lauderdale NAACP, said blacks
are less likely to be offered diversion programs where defendants
avoid a criminal record.

'We're just going to jail. We do not pass 'Go.' We go directly to
jail," she said.

The report looks at information from a number of sources to calculate
county-level admission rates to state prisons for persons convicted of
drug offenses. The analysis does not take into account the length of
sentences nor the type of drug involved.

Data was taken from the U.S. Justice Department, Census Bureau and the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Racial Disparities

Researchers found that 97 percent of the counties in the report have
racial disparities for persons who are sent to prison on drug
offenses. Amanda Petteruti, co-author of the report, noted that
counties with higher poverty rates and those that spend the greatest
amount on law enforcement are more likely to imprison drug offenders.

The report does not offer recommendations to counties. Authors suggest
policymakers consider reforming drug policies, including de-escalation
of the drug war in the black community.