JAIL RATE FOR BLACKS TARGETED

County Out Of Step, Prof Says

Dane County's war on drugs was fought primarily against
African-Americans in the last decade, a UW-Madison professor said.

"The data is overwhelming," said Pam Oliver, a sociology professor
who analyzes drug, crime and imprisonment statistics.

Dane County is above the state average for black imprisonment and
below the state average for white imprisonment, she said. Fifty-eight
percent of those sent to prison from Dane County are black.

The disparity is even more stark considering that blacks make up only
6 percent of the county's population, Oliver said during a forum on
racial profiling and community policing Tuesday evening. About 200
people attended the Madison-area Urban Ministry event at Bethel
Lutheran Church.

In 1999, the black imprisonment rate in Dane County was 39 times what
it was for whites. That's down from a high of 48 in 1997, she said.

As a researcher, Oliver crunches numbers and comes up with
statistics. It is not her role to point fingers or place blame, she
said.

"Racial disparity is a statistical concept. It does not prove
discrimination," she said.

What it does do is point to problems in the community that should be
taken seriously and investigated, she said.

An analogy would be emergency room doctors examining a patient with a
107-degree fever and noting that something is terribly wrong, said
Oliver. "We have to figure out what to do. Disparities are a symptom,
not a diagnosis," she said.

For 175 years in the United States imprisonment rates were relatively
stable, she said. Then, in the mid-1970s the country began
incarcerating more and more of its population, with blacks imprisoned
at a higher rate than whites.

Early in the last century, black imprisonment rates were about double
those of whites. The ratio rose to about 4 to 1 after World War II,
mainly because white imprisonment rates declined, she said. Since
1975, the disparity has grown to 7 to 1 nationally, said Oliver.

In Wisconsin, it's 20 to 1, she said.

Nationally and in Wisconsin, drug offenses are the major cause of the
rise in black imprisonment. There is no evidence that the rise is due
to drug use trends, she said, pointing to data that showed the rates
of illegal drug use are only slightly higher for blacks than whites.

Some, including Madison Police Chief Richard Williams, who is black,
have argued that the arrest and imprisonment rates simply reflect the
fact that drug dealers are primarily black and Hispanic. But Oliver
maintained there is evidence that the ethnic mix of those who sell
drugs is similar to those who use drugs, she said.

Williams also spoke at the forum, promoting his brand of "community
policing," a strategy that steers away from traditional, reactive
police work and tries to address the causes of crime through
community-police partnerships.

He also spoke out against racial profiling - the practice of stopping
motorists based on their ethnicity or race.

It's real, said Williams. But it is also hard to characterize.

"If you went around the room and asked what racial profiling is, you
would get 30 different answers," he said.

Williams pointed to a series of reports in The Capital Times in 1996
that showed that black motorists were treated differently on the road
by Madison police.

Using a computer to analyze more than 25,500 traffic tickets issued
between January 1994 and October 1995, black drivers were found to be
three times as likely as white drivers to be stopped.

A special Equal Opportunities Commission subcommittee on possible
racial bias in traffic citations was formed in response to the
articles.

That eventually led to the formation of Mayor Sue Bauman's Task Force
on Race Relations, a move that Williams likened to "throwing a pebble
into the ocean."

When it formed in 1998, the 15-member panel was designed in part to
recommend remedies for the apparent racial disparity in who is
stopped in traffic by Madison police.

One obvious starting point is to have a police force that is in touch
with its neighborhoods and knows its residents, say advocates of
community policing.

"Community policing is not a destination but a journey," the chief said.