Wisconsin pols seek to remedy staggering race gap in drug sentencing

[undeterred]

An African-American kid on Allied Drive gets caught smoking pot. So begins a criminal history that will follow him throughout his life. Because he lives in a neighborhood with a high police presence, his next misstep results in another arrest. Now he's a repeat offender. His record follows him to adulthood, at which time he is labeled a habitual offender, sent to jail, then prison.

A white kid in tony Maple Bluff is engaged in the same activity, hires a lawyer and avoids criminal charges. Or, more likely, doesn't get caught at all.

"A police car driving through Allied Drive is going to stop people and ask questions just because they're hanging around in a drug neighborhood," said former public defender Eric Schulenburg, who now shares a Madison private criminal defense practice with his son. "If you're talking to friends in Maple Bluff ... you won't be questioned."

Scenarios like these play out routinely in Dane County. About a year ago, the Justice Policy Institute released a study labeling the county third-worst in the nation in terms of racial disparity for drug offenses.

But they don't stop there. In recent years Wisconsin has led the nation at placing minorities in the criminal justice system not just for drugs, but for total crime -- and within the state Dane County is the worst offender.

"The disparity in the drug war has come back down, so that the disparity for drugs is now pretty similar to the disparity for other serious offenses," said University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor Pam Oliver. "But there is still a huge black-white disparity in incarceration and involvement in the criminal justice system across a lot of crime groups."

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/440289

[dembotoz]

1. so which one changes????

with the mentality that we should lock up the bad guys forever,
do you see the push as being for better treatment of black offenders or worse
treatment for white offenders.

This state (and country for that matter) has never been shy about locking people up.
Their is alway money for a new jail.....