The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

"It's distressing," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C.

"We know drug enforcement, to a certain extent, is discretionary," Mauer said. "Depending on what decisions you make, you're going to see very different outcomes in the prison system."

Tuesday's news was discouraging for drug policy officials and black leaders in Iowa, where disproportionate minority confinement has been a problem for at least the last 25 years.

The new findings come as Iowa's long-growing prison population is leveling off, in part because new prison admissions for drug-related crimes are declining for the fifth straight year.

"If drug offenses are on the decline in general, you have to wonder why that is" that the percentage of blacks being admitted to Iowa's prisons is rising, said state Rep. Deborah Berry, D-Waterloo. "I certainly want to find out more."

A decade ago, a Des Moines Register investigation found at least 1 in 12 black Iowans was in prison, on parole or probation - a ratio higher than anywhere else in the country except the District of Columbia. The ratio for whites was 1 in 110, the analysis found.

In 2007, a Sentencing Project study found the state’s black incarceration rate was 13.6 times that of whites — again the greatest among all states.

That year, Culver got a standing ovation from attendees at a Des Moines conference when he pledged to address the disparity and appointed a task force. Mauer praised efforts by Iowa legislative leaders and Culver on the issue but said more major work needs to be done.

One policy change, among several proposals for state leaders, was to do a minority impact statement on all proposed laws that could affect Iowa's prison population. Culver also proposed spending more state money last year for prison re-entry programs, although the Legislature did not approve all that funding, according to Carlos Jayne, a lobbyist for the Justice Reform Consortium.

A state law that passed in 2005 greatly altered Iowa's prison admissions. From 2000 to 2004, the numbers of whites behind bars had shot up substantially. But the new law restricted sales of the cold medicine used to make methamphetamine, and subsequently led to a sharp decline in arrests of meth makers, who were primarily white.

"Now that the meth manufacturing has dropped, the African-American percentage is rising again," said Phyllis Blood, an analyst who tracks the prison population for Iowa's Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning. "Not necessarily as much in raw numbers, but as a percentage of the total prison population."

In fiscal year 2009, 2,212 people have been admitted to Iowa prisons. Of those, 1,603 were white and 537 were black, state figures show.

Blacks made up 2.6 percent of Iowa's population in 2007, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Blood did not break out numbers for Hispanics.

Abraham Funchess, administrator of Iowa's Commission on the Status of African-Americans, said he hopes changes will be made next year in Iowa's criminal code to address issues that affect blacks at sentencing. He said his agency is trying to highlight cases where blacks have been given excessive mandatory sentences that don't match the crimes.

"Some of those mandatory minimums are just killing our kids," he said.

State studies have shown that many factors influence the number of minorities involved in Iowa's justice system. But the strongest factors are legal variables, such as the type of offense committed or a person's prior record.

State research also has found that even with legal and other variables being held constant, there are sometimes different court outcomes for persons of different races, according to Iowa's Department of Human Rights.

Legislative leaders plan to hold a meeting next month as part of a more than yearlong effort to rewrite parts of the criminal code.

Funchess said he is more optimistic that state leaders are willing to implement changes than in years past. "People are just a little more politically engaged now," he said. "I'm hoping that translates into more concrete, practical changes."

Gary Kendall, who heads Iowa's Office on Drug Control Policy, said that while those convicted deserve punishment, blacks lack community support and social equality.

"You also have to deal with poverty, education and social justice issues," he said. "There's no quick fix."
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090415/NEWS10/904150364/-1/ENT05