Perspectives By
Judge Juan Villaseñor and Laurel Quinto | January 10, 2021, 8:02 PM EST
On the heels of nationwide calls to address systemic racism and inequality, sitting judges shed light on the disparities that exist in the justice system and how to guard against bias in
Judge Juan Villaseñor
Laurel Quinto
Racial disparities exist in the criminal justice system. We believe that such a statement is an uncontroversial proposition.
The U.S. now imprisons a greater percentage of its population than any other country in the world.[1] And minorities African Americans and Latinos in particular are disproportionately represented among those inmates.
18 Min Read
(Reuters) - By the time anyone at the Milwaukee County Jail noticed Shade Swayzer had given birth alone in a filthy cell, her baby was dead.
An exterior view of the Milwaukee County Jail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., December 8, 2020. Picture taken December 8, 2020. REUTERS/Eileen Meslar
Swayzer had arrived a week earlier, on July 6, 2016, picked up after a dispute with a hotel clerk and charged with disorderly conduct and a parole violation from an old burglary conviction. She was clearly pregnant, just a few weeks from her due date, and police had her evaluated at a hospital before bringing her to jail. The fetus was deemed active and healthy, and Swayzer cleared for detention.
Economy, finance, and budgets
Speaking at an October 2019 Obama Foundation Summit, Michelle Obama reminisced about growing up in South Shore, a Chicago lakefront neighborhood. Some memories were bitter. The former First Lady, born in 1964, lamented living through “white flight.” As “upstanding families like ours, who were doing everything we were supposed to do . . . moved in,” she said, “white folks moved out.”
In her telling, the whites who abandoned South Shore had motives as obvious as they were ugly, choosing to relocate because “they were afraid of what our families represented.” They voted with their U-Hauls to reject families like hers because of “the color of our skin” and “the texture of our hair,” those “artificial things that don’t even touch on the values that people bring to life. And so, yeah, I feel a sense of injustice.”
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PolitiFact VA: How does the United States Incarceration Rate Stack Up Historically?
Del. Lee Carter claimed the U.S. incarcerates more people than any nation in history as part of his push for criminal justice reform. (Photo: Craig Carper/VPM News)
Speaker: Lee Carter
Date: Dec. 10
Setting: Tweet
Del. Lee Carter, a self-proclaimed socialist mulling a run for governor next year, is calling for sweeping criminal justice reform.
“We incarcerate more of our people than any other nation in history, and second place isn t even close,” Carter, D-Manassas, tweeted on Dec. 10.
“We need a governor who will dramatically reduce our spending on police, our spending on prisons and jails, and our prison population,” he added. “None of the frontrunners are promising that.”