BOOK:
NO
Equal
Justice,
Race
and
Class
in
the
American
Criminal
Justice
System
4/24/99
In recent months, various criminal justice policies and practices, and the racially disparate impacts they produce, have begun to come to the fore of public attention. Last week DRCNet reported that Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) had reintroduced the Traffic Stops Statistics Act, and had introduced legislation to end felony disenfranchisement (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/087.html#profiling and http://www.drcnet.org/wol/087.html#disenfranchisement). Five weeks ago, we reported that Rep. Charges Rangel had introduced legislation to reduce sentences for crack cocaine offenses to the level of powder cocaine sentences (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/083.html#rangel). "NO Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System," by Georgetown University law professor David Cole, analyzes the nature and extent of racial disparities in the criminal justice system and the dynamics that contribute to them. Cole puts forward overwhelming evidence that not only do disparities exist, but the problem extends from the bottom of the system (cops on the beat habitually using racial profiles) to the top (a Supreme Court that has set unattainable standards for invoking protections against racial discrimination). Cole doesn't attribute the disparities to deliberate racism, but rather to the unavoidable tension between law enforcement efficiency and constitutional rights. Rather than staking out a consistent position for balancing these two concerns, Cole argues, police forces and the courts have picked two different points on the spectrum -- one for the majority and another for minorities. The majority, then, doesn't pay the cost of the policies that it enacts -- a cost measured in disparate police searches, no-knock warrants, convictions and incarceration rates. One of the reasons disparity in searches exists is that courts have given police an astonishingly free hand in conducting them. On pages 48-49, Cole lists drug courier "profiles" that drug enforcement agents have presented as "probable cause" for conducting searches: arrived late at nightCole explains that "[s]uch profiles do not so much focus an investigation as provide law enforcement officials a ready-made excuse for stopping whomever they please. The Supreme Court has warned that the mere fact that someone fits a drug-courier profile does not automatically constitute reasonable suspicion justifying a stop. In practice, however, courts frequently defer to the profile and equate it with reasonable suspicion. As one judge said after conducting a comprehensive review of drug-courier profile decisions, '[m]any courts have accepted the profile, as well as the Drug Enforcement Agency's scattershot enforcement efforts, unquestioningly, mechanistically, and dispositively.'" Cole goes on to argue that while the majority doesn't pay the cost of the criminal justice policies that it passes, over time those costs come home in the form of decreased respect for law and unwillingness to cooperate with the system, leading to a diminished ability to control crime and heightened social danger for all. (Buy "NO Equal Justice" online -- just point your browser to http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565844734/drcnet/ and follow the instructions, and DRCNet will earn 15% of what you spend on the book! Or ask for "NO Equal Justice" at your local bookstore.)
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