The increase in reports of violence and overly aggressive prosecution against African American youth by law enforcement officials symbolized by the boot camp beating death of Martin Lee Anderson, the assault of Shelwanda Riley by a police officer and countless other recent dehumanizing attacks led the NAACP to declare a ‘State of Emergency.’
“The NAACP denounces overly aggressive handling of black youth by law enforcement entities, a blatant disregard toward investigating hate crimes and racially discriminatory utilization of prosecutorial discretion,” said Interim NAACP President & CEO Dennis Courtland Hayes. “We demand that the American criminal justice system live up to its Constitutional obligations to serve and protect all Americans with dignity and fairness irrespective of race, ethnicity, gender, religious faith and other differences. Violence and intimidation of our young people is not acceptable, is against the law and must end now.”
National reports and statistical data also clearly illustrate the criminal justice system’s disparate treatment of African American and other racial and ethnic minority young people.
According to a report on racial disparities in the juvenile system commissioned by the Building Blocks for Youth initiative and prepared by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, although minority youth are one-third of the adolescent population in the U.S., minority youth comprise two -thirds of the more than 100,000 young people confined in local detention and state correctional systems.
When white youth and minority youth were charged with the same offenses, African-American youth with no prior admissions were six times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth with the same background. Latino youth were three times more likely than white youth to be incarcerated.
“The problem of racially disparate treatment in our criminal justice system against must be address at every level of governance, from our towns, counties and hamlets to our major metropolitan cities,” said NAACP Washington Bureau Director Hilary Shelton.
The NAACP has called for hearings not only in Congress but also in every community around the nation in order to clearly understand the scope of this problem, and most importantly, craft viable solutions.
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