What Will It Take to End Racial Disparities? More than 250 Seek Answers at Session

No one has the solution.

Not the judges who hand down sentences. Not the law-enforcement and prison officials who work in the trenches. Not the community activists who are fighting to keep Iowa’s African-Americans out of prison.

No one seems to know exactly what it will take to end the complex factors involved in blacks being imprisoned in Iowa at a rate a national study showed was 13.6 times that of whites.

More than 250 people gathered for more than three hours Thursday night to discuss racial disparities in the criminal justice system. They met with a panel of judges, court officers, a prosecutor and community leaders at Payne Memorial AME Church in Waterloo. 

They admit they don’t have all the answers. Still, they have ideas about why the disparities exist and a sense of urgency to find solutions that work.

Racism. Drugs. Deficient school systems. Unemployment. Lack of personal responsibility and discipline. Broken families. Hopelessness. The panel, audience and presenters cited these reasons and many others as contributing to the racial disparities detailed in a study by the Sentencing Project.

“Race is still the decisive factor in who goes to jail and who goes home,” said David Goodson, founder of Social Action Inc., a Waterloo agency that helps black male adolescents with life skills and employment, and forum organizer.

The Rev. Belinda Creighton-Smith, a meeting analyzer, said racism plays a definite role in the problem.

“It’s so easy to blame the victim,” she said. “It’s going to take just as much courage to ask, `What is going on inside of me that is making it easier for me to do this to this person who is of darker hue than I’m doing to the other person.’”

Goodson said more community-based correctional programs are needed.

“What everybody must begin to do is look at how we’re treating non-violent offenders,” he said. “We are criminalizing non-violent offenders.”

But, a judge on the panel said there are consequences for bad behavior.

“When you start talking about non-violent offenders – sometimes you send the wrong message,” said Black Hawk County District Court Judge George Stigler. “How many occasions can you permit an individual to violate the law before he has no regard for the law.”

He added: “There comes a time when the price has to be paid – not only for what the person did, but to make the rest of us safe.”

Goodson said drug programs, residential programs and other alternatives are forms of punishment.

“Prison is not the only form of punishment,” he said. “It’s a form of punishment to wear an ankle bracelet. It’s a form of punishment to check in with a parole officer. It’s a form of punishment to go on work-release and only get a four-hour furlough.”

The majority of the panel of criminal justice experts – four judges, the Blackhawk County attorney and corrections officials, tended to blame factors outside the criminal justice system for the disparities or said they didn’t know why the incarceration rate of blacks is disproportionate.

“If I could speak philosophically, I’d say it’s poverty and all of the things that go with poverty is the first problem in why there is a disparity,” said Black Hawk County District Court Judge Stephen Clarke.

Changes must “begin in the cradle,” he said, adding that communities and churches must help struggling families and young parents.

Goodson agreed, but said in an interview, that criminal justice officials must take some responsibility.

“They don’t want to lump themselves into being part of the problem along with all of the other factors,” Goodson said.

Others on the panel cited improving school systems and finding community mentors.

Alberta Young told the panel about her daughter who has a felony on her record and can’t get a job.

“That is the biggest reason our kids re-offend,” she said. “They can’t get past the application.”

Another woman told the panel that she wanted to know why she reads newspaper articles and police logs about shorter sentences being handed down for people who commit similar crimes.

Stigler said each case is judged on its own merits, but the outcome is different if defendants are late to court or don’t appear at all. He urged the audience to make sure that they help youth and others get to court on time.

“Young people don’t have the same regard for time that middle class people have,” he said.

Stigler said they have the attitude that “it’s court when I get there.”

Getting youth to court on time, preferably with an adult, would keep more of them out of jail and prison, he said.

Rev. Joseph Baring, pastor of Payne Memorial AME Church, said he disliked that answer.

“There is something wrong with that picture,” he said.

Waterloo police Capt. John Beckman said, of the disparities: “This is larger than racism. I’m not sure exactly how we fix it.”

Even so, Beckman said the department and communities must work together.

“I do know that we need to engage. I do know that we need to communicate. And, we need to work together to resolve this problem,” he said.

Beckman upset some people in the audience when a woman asked what she could do about police officers who are harassing her children.

“If this is actually taking place,” Beckman replied. “We’re not going to tolerate this.”

Baring told Beckman that by saying “if” he implied the woman was lying. He said that kind of response impedes communication. Beckman didn’t get a chance to respond.

Some presenters also said mandatory minimum sentencing laws must change.

Black Hawk County District Court Judge Tom Bower, who took notes during the forum, agreed that mandatory sentencing laws tie their hands.

“The mandatory minimum sentences simply prohibits us from doing anything but what the Legislature says,” he said. “There are times, as a judge where I’d like to be able to give somebody probation, but I’m sworn to uphold the law and follow the law whether I agree with it or not.”

Said Black Hawk County Attorney Tom Ferguson: “In many areas where there is not mandatory sentencing sometimes that can result in even greater disparities.”

Edward Valentin, who is in a master’s program at the University of Northern Iowa, asked the panel why there weren’t more blacks in special programs, like Drug Court, in which offenders receive treatment and supervision in exchange for dismissed or reduced charges for successful participation.

Judge Bower said three of the 23 people referred to the program are black. Federal funding restrictions tie their hands, he said. Defendants charged with possession with intent to deliver, he said, aren’t allowed to participate.

Minister Michael Muhammad of the Nation of Islam founded a local radio station in Waterloo. He punctuated some of his points by pounding his fists on the podium. Waterloo is in trouble, he said. He criticized the panel for its lack of humanity in dealing with blacks. And he criticized black leadership for failing to help its youth.

“We have to have knowledge of self and that has to start in the black community. We have to force- not ask, not negotiate, not campaign – force justice. You don’t beg for justice. You demand it and you take justice. Or you die trying.”

He added: “The justice system will not work in its present condition. It’s corrupt to its core,” he said, slamming his fist on the podium. “Your own damn president (George Bush) is a liar.”

He received a standing ovation from the majority of the crowd.

Baring said some residents are caught up in a “vicious cycle” that must end.

“After awhile people get tired of flipping burgers at Mickey D’s. They’re either slinging on the corner or robbing or back in the system. These guys who get out have got a felony on their record. They can’t get a job. So if you get out and you can’t get a job, what are you going to do to survive? You get back in the system,” Baring said.

At least one participant said the forum focused too much on problems and not enough on what will be done to fix the problems.

“I felt like nothing happened here,” said Sharon Howard, after the meeting. “Nothing was said of importance. Nothing was said that we didn’t already know. It was just a coming together.”

Baring disagreed.

“I think we broke some ground,” said Baring. “I think it was symbolic that all of the judges, the police captain and everybody came out, because it sent a message to all of those folks gathered in here that somebody does care about the issue.”

Baring said the meeting didn’t get as “in depth and in detail as we wanted” because the issue is complex, but that future meetings will delve further. 

Abraham Funchess, a panel moderator and division administrator for the Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans, said he is disturbed by statistics that show 1 in 3 blacks born today will spend time in jail or prison.

“It should be disturbing to blacks and disturbing to conscientious whites,” he said.

Jim Day, who is white and serves as vice president of the Waterloo NAACP, challenged whites on the panel to empower “folks who don’t look like us.”

“As white folks we need to recognize that we are indeed privileged. That we do have that power,” he said. “That there are certain things that we are not held accountable for in the same manner.”

He urged action.

“We cannot afford to lose one more black child to an unjust criminal justice system,” he said.

Goodson, the event organizer, said additional meetings will be held and a task force will be convened to work on the problems.

The Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, using statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, 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.

Blacks account for just 2.3 percent of Iowa’s population, but 25 percent of its prison population.

David Meeks, director of the Waterloo Human Rights Commission, told the panel that everyone wants safe streets and neighborhoods and to fight drugs and crime.

“You can say racism, racism, racism,” he said “But we can fix a bad practice if it’s in the sentencing guidelines. If it is in the officer’s conduct on the street, that can be fixed. If it’s the laws and the ordinances, that can be fixed.”

Speakers had varying opinions about the issues, among them:

State Rep. Deborah Berry, D-Waterloo, said she will craft legislation to combat the issue:

“Those violent offenders versus the non-violent offenders. We need to break that up. You’re having rapists, pedophiles and murderers kind of lumped into the same group as drug criminals, drug dealers.”

Marvin Spencer Jr., a juvenile court officer for 18 years, said: “You can’t fail to educate someone and then blame them for going to prison. We need to make some changes.”

Sharon Goodson, president of Waterloo’s NAACP and sister of David Goodson, said: “Unbelievable. But, for the last 20 years, we have known this same thing that is going on now. That blacks are incarcerated at a higher rate than whites. It has not changed.”