The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

"They've done enough talking," Linley said, heading to her car before the forum's end. "They need to get an action plan in place - tomorrow. You may start with only two or three things, but at least it's a start."

Thursday night's meeting at Corinthian Baptist Church in downtown Des Moines was the second organized by state and local agencies in the wake of a new study showing Iowa's rate of black incarceration compared with that for whites is greater than all states. The study, from the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, found the state's black incarceration rate is six times that of whites - the worst such disproportion in the country.

But to many in the audience, the study was nothing new. Disparate incarceration rates in adults and juveniles have been documented in Iowa for 25 years.

Like Linley, many who spoke at the forum said they wanted action. Still, many in the mostly black audience disagreed about what action was most necessary.

Black leaders say they are coming up with an action plan - after one more yet-to-be-scheduled forum but in time for this year's legislative session.

In the meantime, here's what some panel members and attendees said:

David Goodson, a longtime activist on the issue from Waterloo, said the state needs urgently to expand community-based correctional services for nonviolent offenders.

Goodson said there's no question the justice system is racist. Previous studies have shown minorities receive disparate treatment, from the setting of their bail to pre-trial release to sentencing to the length of time served.

Nonviolent offenders, particularly drug offenders, he said, deserve access to services, jobs and a chance to change.

Iowa Corrections Director John Baldwin said one of the best hopes of the future is addressing front-end problems. "By the time people work their way through the system, it's almost too late," he said.

However, Baldwin said, research shows that a distinct difference does exist in how minorities convicted of certain crimes are treated by the corrections system. "So if you are looking for ideas, that may be a place to start."

Perhaps the most controversial speaker was Polk County Judge Odell McGhee, a longtime prosecutor and judge who can be seen on public-access television in Des Moines presiding over truancy court.

McGhee placed responsibility flatly at the feet of the black community, saying its families and its churches had failed the young. "I know that's harsh, and I wish I could lay blame somewhere else, but I don't think I can," he said.

McGhee upset many in the audience - but also received wide applause - when he insisted that far too many black families had lost control of their children.

He urged parents to set and stick to rules, provide discipline, make sure their children have goals and support their kids' accomplishments.

"It would be nice if we let out more nonviolent offenders," he conceded. "But in this jurisdiction on average, you've committed a lot of crimes to get to prison."

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OP ED

Black incarceration rate raises fundamental question: How to fix it? Michael Judge

October 17, 2007

In the early 1990s, not long before he died of cancer, I spent a day with the African-American "prison poet" Etheridge Knight. I was in college and had volunteered to drive him from his reading here on the campus of the University of Iowa to the Iowa State campus in Ames. The readings were, quite simply, beautiful - and brought both audiences to tears.

But it was something Etheridge said between poems at the Ames reading that stayed with me for years. "After being released from prison in 1968," he told the crowd, "I entered the bigger prison of society." He didn't say this with any semblance of self pity, but as a simple statement of fact.

Etheridge's words came to mind this summer when the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based criminal-justice watchdog, found that blacks in Iowa are imprisoned at 13.6 times the rate of whites, the widest disparity in the nation. In fact, according to the Sentencing Project study, which used data from the U.S. Department of Justice, blacks in Iowa are imprisoned at a rate more than double the national average.

Iowa, of course, is not alone in locking up African-Americans at an alarming rate. Nationwide, a black person is 5.6 times more likely to be incarcerated than a white person, more than 10 times more likely if arrested in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota and, of course, Iowa.

This, some Iowans assure me, is because many of the blacks arrested here are from out of state and have come here to engage in criminal activity - deal drugs, form gangs, etc. This, in turn, pushes up the rate of black incarceration in the state.

Question attitude of presumed guilt

Many Iowans are not inclined to believe that racial profiling, or the fact that Iowa has but a handful of black judges, might be contributing to the problem. They begin with a presumption of guilt: Blacks arrested in Iowa are simply more likely to be guilty of felonious behavior, thus the higher rate of incarceration.

Maybe so. But what we should be asking ourselves as Iowans - and Americans: Why is this so and how can we fix it?

And that's exactly what Iowa's leaders, however belatedly, are doing. Back in 2001, a task force appointed by then Gov. Tom Vilsack reported that black inmates occupied 24 percent of Iowa prison beds even though blacks comprised just over 2 percent of the state's total population. After taking office last year, Gov. Chet Culver assigned a committee to act on the 2001 report.

Just recently, the Culver committee released a number of recommendations aimed at lowering the incarceration rate for black Iowans. Together, they total $9.7 million in budget requests to bolster early-childhood education, community-based corrections programs, drug-prevention programs and job and re-entry training for former inmates.

If approved, some but not enough of this money would go toward better community mental-heath education and treatment. According to a study by the U.S. Justice Department last year, 56 percent of state prisoners, 45 percent of federal prisoners and 64 percent of local jail inmates suffer from mental illnesses. Sadly, there are now more mentally ill people behind bars in America than in mental hospitals. And since minority populations are less likely to receive proper mental-health care, they end up behind bars in higher numbers.

Provide adequate legal representation

Here in Iowa, as in other states, inadequate legal representation may also be contributing to the problem. An African-American attorney who practices family law in Iowa tells me the public defendant's office is generally overworked and often doesn't have time to take all the cases it should to trial. This reduces the public defendant's leverage to plea bargain and generally gives the county prosecutor the upper hand.

"If the prosecutor knows the PD [public defendant] is not likely to go to trial, they can charge defendants with the maximum crime and have greater confidence that the charges will stick," the attorney explained. "This, in turn, leads to greater prison terms or jail time."

Other factors that contribute to higher incarceration for blacks in Iowa and across the nation are mandatory and determinate sentencing initiatives, especially for drug offenses. This could be remedied by not only providing greater resources for drug prevention and treatment but by returning sentencing powers to the discretion of judges. As the Sentencing Project recommends in its study, "Policymakers should follow the lead of legislatures in states such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Delaware and revisit the wisdom of mandatory minimum sentencing."

Confront violence, breakdown of family

Finally, black leaders need to address the problems of violence, drug abuse and the breakdown of the family within their own communities. Shelby Steele has written persuasively of post-civil-rights-era black leaders trading individual responsibility for the group association of victimization. As Steele writes in his influential book, "The Content of Our Character": "Hard work, education, individual initiative, stable family life, property ownership - these have always been the means by which ethnic groups have moved ahead in America. Regardless of past or present victimization, these 'laws' of advancement apply absolutely to black Americans also."

There's no denying that blacks in all walks of life have made great strides since the inception of the civil-rights movement and indeed since Etheridge Knight was released from prison. Still, with African-Americans continuing to fill our prisons in hugely disproportionate numbers, it's worth asking our civil-rights leaders, our law-enforcement officials, our state and national representatives, and ourselves, the same question another black poet, Langston Hughes, asked in 1951:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

...Or does it explode?

MICHAEL JUDGE of Iowa City is a freelance journalist, contributing editor at The Far Eastern Economic Review and a fifth-generation Iowan.