White individuals hold the power to influence Black citizens'
interactions with racial profiling, criminalization, and
incarceration.
Out of Balance: New SPLC Action Fund report finds mass incarceration
in Louisiana fueled by white-dominated law enforcement system
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Dwayne Fatherree | Read the full piece here
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Friend,
When Rosalind Bobb's son Jamon "Monty" Rogers was
murdered in 2006, she had to find out details from the local newspaper
- not from law enforcement.
"All they said, and I read it in the paper, was that it was
drug-related," Bobb said. "But they didn't find any
drugs anywhere. And I asked them, 'Did you find any
drugs?' and they said, 'No.' Well, why are
y'all saying that?
"Many times I went to ask them questions and they could not
answer me," Bobb said. "So I knew I had to do what I had
to do to get justice for my murdered child."
The assumptions made by law enforcement in New Iberia, Louisiana, and
the lack of responsiveness to Bobb's inquiries are nothing new.
For decades, Black residents have voiced their outrage over the lack
of attention to crime within and against their communities. They have
also protested the abuse of young Black men in a criminal justice
system that does not represent them fairly.
In a new report titled Out of Balance
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, the SPLC Action Fund
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, the Southern Poverty Law Center's lobbying arm, looks at
parish (county) criminal justice system leadership in Louisiana. The
report finds a huge disparity between the state's racial
demographics and the ethnicity of its sheriffs and district attorneys
- the officials at the forefront of criminal investigations and
prosecutions.
"Although people of color are grossly overrepresented at every
point of the criminal justice system in Louisiana, white individuals
hold the power to influence Black citizens' interactions with
racial profiling, criminalization, and incarceration," the
report states.
The numbers are startling.
Of the 64 sheriffs across the state, only four (6%) are Black. Only
12% of the 42 district attorneys are Black. This is in a state where
almost a third of the population is Black.
According to state-level sentencing data
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compiled by the nonprofit Sentencing Project, 581 of every
100,000 people in Louisiana are incarcerated. That is the
second-highest rate of incarceration in the U.S. Louisiana only
recently dropped slightly behind Mississippi, where the incarceration
rate is 584 per 100,000.
As in other states across the Deep South, the system is in many ways a
legacy of 150 years of slavery and nearly a century of Black
Codes
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and Jim Crow
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segregation, under which states enacted laws designed
specifically to criminalize Black people.
The people being sentenced in Louisiana are 3.8 times as likely to be
Black as white - even though 31.2% of the population is Black
and 57.9% white. As of 2022, 65% of Louisiana's prison
population is Black.
"Clearly, the people with chief roles in Louisiana's
criminal justice system do not reflect the state's demographic
diversity, despite research that shows that diversity in these ranks
increases public safety," the SPLC Action Fund report says.
"Out of Balance aims to expose the lack of diversity in
Louisiana's law enforcement - particularly its sheriffs
and DAs - to begin to chart a path toward a system truly
representative of the communities it serves, and a culture that
produces different outcomes for people of color."
READ MORE
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
Friend, will you make a gift to help the SPLC fight for
justice and equity in courts and combat white supremacy?
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