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A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Participants will discuss why a disproportionate number of African-Americans are imprisoned in Iowa during a town hall meeting tonight in Waterloo.
This first-in-the-nation status is nothing to gloat about: Iowa tops the nation for imprisoning blacks at a rate 13.6 times that of whites, according to national study released in July by The Sentencing Project. Latinos here are imprisoned 2.5 times the rates of whites.
The meeting will be held from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at Payne AME Church, 1044 Mobile St., in Waterloo. A panel of judges, prosecutors, prison and law enforcement officials, state lawmakers and others will discuss possible reasons for the disparities.
David Goodson, founder of Social Action Inc., a Waterloo agency that helps black male adolescents with life skills and employment, organized the forum. He said he hopes the meeting begins to create a shift in Iowans’ views about crime and punishment and why the state imprisons so many non-violent offenders. More community-based correctional programs are needed, he said.
“It’s to help people to begin to see the difference between non-violent and violent offenders and how we should treat them in the correctional system” Goodson said. “And that, in and of itself, will begin to address the issue of the over-representation of blacks in the system.”
A short question and answer session will follow presentations and a panel discussion.
The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, used statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice. It found that in 2005 Iowa incarcerated 309 whites, 4,200 blacks and 764 Hispanics per every 100,000 people. The national average was 412 whites, 2,290 blacks and 742 Latinos per 100,000.
Across the nation, 1 in 9 black men between the ages of 25 and 29 are in prison or jail, according to the study.
According to recent statistics from the State Data Center of Iowa, almost 70,000 blacks live in the state, accounting for 2.3 percent of the state’s population. Iowa has 8,926 people in prison, of which 2,198, or 25 percent, were black, according to Sept. 13 statistics from the Iowa Department of Corrections.
The Sentencing Project predicts a grim forecast if solutions aren’t found: 1 in 3 African-American males born today will be imprisoned during his lifetime.
The project urged policy-makers to implement strategies, including studying drug-sentencing laws, mandatory minimum sentencing, sentencing alternatives and requiring that all prison legislation be accompanied by a study on how the change will affect minority communities.
The website is at www.sentencingproject.org.
Tonight’s meeting is sponsored by Social Action Inc., the Waterloo Commission on Human Rights, and University of Northern Iowa’s Center for Multicultural Education, the Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans and the Ongoing Covenant with Black Iowa, among others.
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