University of Wisconsin Law School clinical professor Ken Streit gave the closing address at the 2008 Racial Justice Summit organized by Dane County's YWCA and held October 16 and 17 in Madison. The Summit brought together judges, attorneys, law enforcement officials, social workers, and other interested community members to discuss responses that could reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system in Wisconsin.
The UW Law School was a sponsor of the conference.
Streit’s remarks were based on data from the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission, Wisconsin Department of Corrections, and United States Bureau of Justice Statistics. He pointed to the many issues regarding drug offenses where questions could be raised about enforcement strategies because there was rarely a "victim" in the traditional sense other than police surveillance.
Streit noted that, while drug sentences make up a high volume of admissions to Wisconsin prisons, their duration is comparatively shorter than the admissions for lower volume offenses such as homicide, robberies and assault. Those offenses tend to be highly concentrated in just a few Zip Code areas in Wisconsin and the racial disparities in sentencing are far lower or non-existent for these serious non-drug offenses.
The Wisconsin Sentencing Commission's look at racial disparity sampled five general crime categories and the sentencing that took place a few years ago. Streit observed that one of the greatest racial differences was that Blacks had nearly twice the rate of having served prior prison sentences at the time of sentencing. Noting the predictive effect of the prior prison term on whether the judge selects prison versus probation at the current sentence, Streit suggested several ways that community corrections could be radically changed to improve outcomes in Milwaukee and other counties.
Finally, Streit noted that, of the 21 Midwest and Northeast states, Wisconsin was third in the combined rate of prison and jail incarceration. Since this includes states with much larger cities than Milwaukee - and accompanying higher rates of serious crimes in those cities - Streit questioned how Wisconsin had come to such a high rate of incarceration.
Streit, who received his J.D. degree from Northwestern University in 1974, is a supervising attorney and clinical associate professor with the UW Law School’s Frank J. Remington Center and teaches courses in legal ethics and juvenile justice administration. His experience includes work as a staff attorney for Legal Action of Wisconsin and as the first attorney for Disability Rights in Wisconsin. He served as a policy adviser to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services on issues of juvenile delinquency, prisons and probation, education, and child welfare.
Submitted by on October 21, 2008
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