Blacks Get More Jail Time In Miami-Dade: Report

MIAMI, FL — Blacks get more jail time than whites and Hispanics in Miami-Dade County and black Hispanics are six times more represented in county jails than other groups, according to a new study from the American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Miami. The authors charge that racial and ethnic disparities occur at all decision points in Miami-Dade's criminal justice system. The findings were released Thursday.

“The report makes an invaluable contribution to the community by using the county’s own data to document what many believe based on anecdotal evidence — that race and ethnicity shape a person’s treatment in the county’s criminal justice system," asserted ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon. "This report is about the outcome of systemic policies and practices that produce racial and ethnic disparities – policies, practices and outcomes that must be changed if there is to be justice in Miami-Dade’s criminal justice system.”

Reacting to the findings, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle also said Thursday that her office has always tried to make fairness and justice a priority through structured supervision and bias training while promoting a culture of diversity and fairness.

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"We have not yet had a full opportunity to examine the findings released by the ACLU
today," Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. "However, I take my responsibility as your State Attorney to pursue unbiased justice for all in our community very seriously."

Fernandez Rundle added that her staff will work with the ACLU and other community stakeholders to make sure that the State Attorney's Office takes appropriate steps to correct any bias that may be affecting judicial outcomes.

Authored by Univeristy of Miami sociologists, the report examined six years of data between 2010 and 2015. The initiative was launched following the public outcry over the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and other high-profile cases alleging disparate treatment of blacks by police in the United States.

Click here to read the complete report.

“We examined individual and neighborhood racial and ethnic disparities across multiple decision points within Miami-Dade County’s criminal justice system, uncovering racial and ethnic disparities at each of those decision points,” said Nick Petersen, the co-lead author of the report along with Marisa Omori, both assistant professors of sociology at the University of Miami with doctoral degrees.

Titled "Unequal Treatment: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Miami-Dade Criminal Justic," the main findings of the study include:

• Racial disparities occur at every stage of the criminal justice system, compounding and worsening the further a defendant goes through the system.
• Black defendants, regardless of ethnicity, are overrepresented at every stage of the Miami-Dade criminal justice system, relative to their share of the county population.
• Black Hispanics experience the most punitive outcomes, facing a four times higher share of arrests in the county, and six times higher share of the incarcerated population, relative to their share of the county population.
• Racial and ethnic disparities also occur at the neighborhood level — there are higher rates of arrest, pretrial detention, prosecution, conviction and incarceration for defendants arrested in black neighborhoods. Black non-Hispanic defendants are sentenced to longer prison terms than any other racial or ethnic group.
• White defendants who are Hispanic are the most under-represented in the county’s criminal justice system relative to their share of the population.

“Our analysis found disparities at every decision point that result in advantages for white defendants and neighborhoods, and disadvantages for black defendants and neighborhoods,” according to Omori.

The ACLU of Florida plans to use the report to advocate for changes in policies and practices to reduce the disparities.

“We are organizing meetings, not only with community leaders representing large numbers of directly impacted individuals, but also with law enforcement and local elected officials, to seek input, identify solutions, and change practices to create more fairness in how our county’s criminal justice system treats people," added Jeanne Baker, who chairs the ACLU of Florida Greater Miami Chapter’s police practices committee.

Photo courtesy Miami Police Department