By rejecting the way people’s ethnicity and race are recorded, and the lack of corrections, the United States justice system, especially in counties, affects fairness and evaluation of the administration of justice for the Hispanic populationindicates a recent report.
“The failure to measure Hispanics and Latinos, and in particular to capture the diversity of experiences in the Hispanic community, is a key obstacle to achieving fairness and equity in the criminal justice system”, says the report “Exploring Hispanic Representation in Local Criminal Justice Systems”.
The study was conducted by Nancy Rodriguez and Rebecca Tublitz, experts in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society, Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irving (UCI).
It was found that when storing data on the detained Hispanic or Latino population, the ethnicity of the person is not always taken into account, therefore information is contradictory and prevents the system from understanding racial and ethnic differences in local jurisdictions.
“Out of 14 sites, only in 30 percent of criminal justice registry management systems collect data on Hispanic or Latino ethnicity. apart from racial characteristics,” the report says. “The rest fixed Hispanic ethnicity on one racial variable, if anything.”
In other words, information about arrested Hispanics who participated in any trial, even if they were brought to trial or managed to get out of prison, is incomplete, which makes it almost impossible to determine their origin.
The study notes that the judicial systems of the counties in question have special fields for determining the ethnic origin of people, but these data are not taken into account.
“Even where agencies are able to determine the ethnicity of Hispanics, there is a low level of reporting and a high proportion of missing data, which prevents accurate measurement of results,” the report, supported by MacArthur Foundation.
Examples include the cases of Charleston, South Carolina, and St. Louis County, Missouri.
“At the entrance to the justice system, that is arrest and search in prison: Hispanics … make up a smaller proportion of those arrested or searched than their population throughout the county,” it emphasizes.
By contrast, blacks and indigenous people were overrepresented in arrests.
“Importantly, we caution that our findings may reflect an inaccurate representation of Hispanics in criminal justice data management systems,” the experts note in their report. “Local, state, and national efforts to advance racial justice should be focused on systematically enrolling Hispanics in the justice system.”
Correct registration of persons involved in any process of the judicial system can help to understand how justice is administered, the report indicates, although it is not the only one under consideration.
“Counts and indicators of composition are not enough to understand how local communities influence participation in the justice system in different ways,” he warns. “Agencies should report key outcome indicators using the appropriate population denominator for at-risk groups.”
That is, marking people as Hispanic or non-Hispanic in the registry is not enough, it is exposed.
“In addition, given the increased involvement of young people at the forefront of the justice system – in arrests and prisons – we recommend that jurisdictions register them in more key age categories (e.g. 18-24, 25-34, etc.) within racial and ethnic groups”, indicated.
Example
Examples include the situation andin Harris County, Texas, home to over two million Hispanics.that is, four out of 10 people in this county are Hispanic or Latino.
“It’s a large and growing population: Harris County has more than 363,000 more Hispanics and Hispanics since 2010 than nearly 23 U.S. states, outpacing population growth overall. ethnic groups.”
The justice system should record a person’s race and ethnicity separately, but the report notes that this does not apply to the entire registry, making it harder to analyze the data and predict improvements.
“The data obtained from the prosecution reflected only ethnic information (Hispanic or non-Hispanic) and did not contain racial information for cases accepted for prosecution,” it notes.
what can help
One way to address these issues is to allow individuals involved in detention processes, direct charges, trials and releases to self-identify.
“Self-identification and provide people with multiple opportunities for self-identification by system pointscan generate informative data for building standardized categories,” the report says.
They also involve closer cooperation between justice systems and civil society organizations.
“We encourage collaboration among criminal justice stakeholders, community organizations, and Hispanic political leaders to identify ways to more accurately reflect the Hispanic population in local justice systems,” the experts say.
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Source: La Opinion
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