Last week, in the wake of the tragic killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the renewed national debate about racialized policing, the Bangor Daily News editorialized on the discriminatory nature or our criminal justice system.

While racial disparities are ubiquitous throughout our broken justice system, this article chose to focus on the following five areas:

1. Police Shootings

In the United States, excessive policing disproportionately negatively impacts communities of color. As the ACLU report War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing highlights, this is particularly dangerous given the unprecendented flow of military equipment to our local, state and federal law enforcement. Paramilitary and SWAT raids are disparately meted out against our black and Latino citizenry. Since April, police have killed at least six unarmed black men under circumstances that strongly suggest the unjustified use of lethal force and racial profiling.

As Rachel said in an interview with MPBN last week:

"The police in American have become to militarized. Neighborhoods are not war zones, and police should not be treating us like war-time enemies" - Rachel Healy, Director of Communications and Public Education

To call on our lawmakers and the Department of Justice to take action against racialized policing and the aggressive militarized response of local, county, and state law enforcement, please click here.

 2.  Incarceration

While black people represent just 13% of the United States population, they account for almost half of the 2.23 million people currently incarcerated in the United States. Even in Maine, one of the whitest states in the nation, significant disparities exist within our prison system. While black people represent just 1% of the Maine population, they account for 7% of our prison population. 

 3. Death Penalty

In addition to being overrepresented in the prison population, black defendants are also more likely to end up on death row. This is particularly true in circumstances where the victim of the crime was white. According to a 2007 study, black people are three times more as white people to be sentenced to death in circumstances where the victims are white; when controlling for other factors, the single most reliable indication of whether a prisoner will be sentenced to death is the race of the victim. Maine is fortunate - we abolished the death penalty over a century ago. However, it is still legal in 32 states and under federal law. To learn more about the ACLU's work to end the use of the death penalty click here.

4. Drug Arrests

As we have blogged about repeatedly, the War on Drugs has largely been waged along color lines. While research has consistently shown similar use rates, drug laws are disproportionately enforced against communities of color. This is true both nationally and here in Maine. In our state, black people are 3.68 times more likely to be arrested for a drug crime. In York county, they are 8.71 times more likely.

5. Sentencing

Nationally, many studies have shown that black people receive longer sentences than white people for the same crimes. While disparities in arrests and subsequent incarceration rates point to disparate sentencing outcomes, we lack the specific data necessary to determine exactly where and what is driving these disparities.

On August 28th, we celebrated the 51st anniversary of the March on Washington in which Dr. King called called on our nation to make real the promise of democracy for all our citizens, regardless of race  The tragedy in Ferguson reminds us that half a century later, there is much work still be done.