JUSTICE IS NOT COLOR-BLIND

New Bills Root Out Racial Discrepancies In The Criminal Justice System

Why is it that 73 percent of Connecticut's prison beds are currently
occupied by people of color? Lawmakers hope to answer that question this
session with a series of proposals aimed not just at understanding why
racial disparities in Connecticut's prisons are among the highest in the
nation, but at reducing those numbers.

The first proposals examine why people of color may be arrested in the first
place. Two proposals currently under consideration, one authored by Sen.
Alvin Penn (D-Bridgeport) and another from the House Judiciary Committee,
would make racial profiling by police in Connecticut illegal.

"Policing has always been in the business of profiling," says Nick Pastore,
former New Haven chief of police who now works at the Criminal Justice
Policy Center. Pastore recalls when motorcycle clubs and people with long
hair were the main targets. Today, it's African Americans and Latinos who
end up routinely stopped on the pretext of traffic violations.

"It becomes part of the reason why there's a racial imbalance in the
criminal justice system," says Rep. John Martinez (D-New Haven), who has
been working with his fellow Judiciary Committee member, co-chair Michael
Lawlor (D-East Haven) and groups such as the NAACP to draft this package of
bills.

"It's well to train and educate people to not succumb to stereotypes,"
agrees Pastore, who favors any bill that would outlaw racial profiling and
force police to document who and why they pull over people. Currently, he
says, police departments don't routinely track this kind of data and
prohibitions against racial profiling are not spelled out in most police
department procedural manuals.

"Recording statistics is very important," says Pastore. "This would give
rise to accountability. The issue is out there and it's important for the
police, especially for police leaders, to recognize it. Certainly guidance
and education is the key to the situation. Based on my experience, I see no
problems to implementing these laws."

Penn says his bill, which would ban racial profiling and require police to
document and justify traffic stops, has already passed the Public Safety
Committee and is moving to the Senate floor for a vote soon. Martinez , who
worked on the very similar House Bill, says he doesn't care who gets the
credit as long as it passes. Penn is
confident it will.

"This is only the first step in the process, and it still requires the
approval of both the House and Senate as well as the signature of the
governor, but it has to start somewhere," says Penn. "I am confident we will
have this law on the books by the end of session."

The Judiciary Committee has also proposed the creation of a commission to
study racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. Testifying before
the committee last Monday, Connecticut's Child Advocate Linda
Pearce Prestley said she was struck by the disproportionately high number of
Latinos and African Americans while investigating conditions at Long Lane
School, the state's maximum security facility for juveniles.

Indeed, according to a 1997 federal survey of 35 states, Connecticut arrests
more juveniles than any other state and locks up minority youth offenders at
rates that are among the most disproportionate in the country. The issue,
says Prestley, must be examined and alternatives to incarceration explored.

She does not, however, believe that the proposal's stated goal to reduce the
number of minorities in juvenile detention from the current 81 percent to 60
percent by Jan. 1, 2001 makes sense. Indeed, more than a few legislators
sitting on the Judiciary Committee expressed reservations over the idea of
establishing such a race-based quota.

Martinez wants to do more than just study the situation, however. He
believes the goal to reduce the number of inmates of color can be
accomplished by placing greater emphasis on alternatives to prison. To that
end, he has helped craft a number of proposals that would give judges
greater sentencing options.

According to Martinez, about 80 percent of all Latinos and African-Americans
are in the system because of drugs. And drug offenses come with mandatory
minimum sentences imposed by the legislature that severely limit judicial
discretion. "A lot of judges complain they have their hands tied," says
Martinez.

What's more, some of those mandatory minimums seem to unfairly penalize
people of color. At the moment, for instance, anyone caught dealing or in
possession of crack cocaine--more prevalent in the largely minority inner
cities--faces twice the jail time of someone caught with powder cocaine. One
of Martinez's proposals would reduce the penalty for possession of one ounce
of crack and bring it in line with the mandatory five-year minimum penalty
for people caught with one ounce of powder cocaine.

Martinez believes strongly that violent offenders should be locked up and
made to serve the maximum amount of time possible. However, he feels
non-violent offenders who landed in jail because of their addictions would
be better served by treatment and intensive supervision by probation officers.

"It costs $26,000 to house someone in prison for a year," says Martinez. "We
should have better options: treatment, employment services, alternative
incarceration centers. The state saves money and it helps the individual pay
retribution and work on self-improvement."

Martinez acknowledges that treatment bed slots are limited, but he believes
day treatment and "more in-your-face probation," combined with the threat
that failure to follow the rules will result in an
immediate return to prison, would be effective for many.

He has a good idea of what works because, 20 years ago, he fought his own
battle with addiction and has worked to help addicts in recovery ever since.
The package of bills, says Martinez, has bipartisan support. "We've got a
lot of people on board here," he says, "including the chiefs of police and
the Department of Correction."