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| County Attacking Race Issues In DOC, Ect. |
| By host.madison.com |
| Published: 06/14/2010 |
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We've heard a lot of talk about the staggering racial disparities in the state's criminal justice system in recent years. Wisconsin has routinely ranked at or near the top of states for the rate at which it locks up blacks compared with whites. And Dane County's progressive reputation has been tarnished by the rate at which it sends black offenders to prison - nearly half of black men between the ages of 25 and 29 residing in the county are either incarcerated or under court-ordered supervision. According to a study by Pam Oliver, a UW sociology professor, black men in Dane County are 21 times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. And according to a Justice Policy Institute report in 2007, black men in Dane County were 97 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug crimes, the second-highest rate in the nation. A team from Dane County will take on the daunting task of tackling that problem, meeting for the first time on Monday. It will be their job to take recommendations released last fall by the Dane County Task Force on Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System and make them work. Celia Jackson, the chair of the implementation team who also chaired the task force, says part of the mission will be to build popular support for addressing a situation that for decades has been brushed under the rug. "There are a lot of things about Madison and Dane County that are very progressive," says Jackson, secretary of the state Department of Regulation and Licensing and a former Milwaukee County prosecutor. "But when we talk about race ... I think we still have a long way to go. Nobody really likes to talk about it." Read More. |
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