STATE'S POOR END UP ON EXPRESS LANE TO PRISON

Dear Editor: In his Martin Luther King Day address, Gov. Jim Doyle
announced his intention to create a commission to study the reasons why
Wisconsin is one of the national leaders in the imprisonment of black
men. This is a very serious problem and deserves exactly this kind of
serious consideration.

Any thoughtful prison reform must begin with recognition that the
majority of men in Wisconsin prisons are black or Hispanic. While
there may certainly be explicitly racist individuals in positions of
power in the criminal justice system, the governor is absolutely right
to look for wider causes of the problem.

Having spent over 30 years as a lawyer in the criminal justice system
in Wisconsin, I am well aware of the systematic problems that send
black males to prison at a much higher rate than their white
counterparts.

Consider, for example, the hypothetical cases of two young men
arrested for selling marijuana. One is a white college student selling
to his classmates in the dorm. The other is a young black man selling
on the street. Both are convicted of the same offense. Both are placed
on probation and given exactly the same rules to follow. Both are to
get treatment for drug problems, not have contact with the people who
got them in trouble and have either a full-time job or be in school.

From the standpoint of the criminal justice system both young men
have been treated fairly and exactly the same way. No one would accuse
anyone of racial bias.

But the young black man is by some measures 200 times more likely to
go to prison than the white college student.

The college student will most likely get drug treatment under his
parents' health insurance, his parents will move him out of the dorm
and into a private apartment near campus, and he will stay in school
and graduate. By using all these resources he is virtually guaranteed
to successfully complete his probation and get on with his life
exactly as planned.

The young black man may have none of those resources. No health
insurance. No place to live but in the same neighborhood. He has no
job, no school, just probation violations and prison.

Gov. Doyle's proposal will force us to confront the injustice that is
at the heart of the criminal justice system. It is about time.

Rev. Jerry Hancock

director, Prison Ministry Project

First Congregational, UCC Madison