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Study: Blacks imprisoned at the highest rate in the U.S.
DES MOINES, Iowa — Blacks in the United States are imprisoned at more than five times the rate of whites, and Hispanics are locked up at nearly double the white rate, according to a study released last Wednesday by a criminal justice policy group.
The report by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based think tank, found that states in the Midwest and Northeast have the greatest black-to-white disparity in incarceration.
Such figures “reflect a failure of social and economic interventions to address crime effectively,” as well as racial bias in the justice system, said Marc Mauer, the group’s executive director.
Iowa had the widest disparity in the nation, imprisoning blacks at more than 13 times the rate of whites. In Iowa, blacks are imprisoned at a rate more than double the national average. For every 100,000 people, Iowa incarcerates 309 whites and 4,200 blacks, the study said.
Paul Stageberg, administrator of the Iowa Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning, said the results are not surprising, but the causes are subject to interpretation.
He said the state’s disproportionately high black arrest rates are likely linked to high poverty rates among blacks and lower educational achievement.
In 2001, a governor’s task force released a report that said 24 percent of Iowa prison beds were occupied by black inmates even though blacks comprised just over 2 percent of the state’s population.
The group that compiled last week’s report made several recommendations, such as reviewing federal drug laws and giving judges more discretion to decide sentences rather than imposing mandatory minimum prison terms.
Rare letter for sale: Pardon of black Underground Railroad hero
PHILADELPHIA — A letter that documents President Franklin Pierce’s pardon of a black man who harbored slaves went up for sale last Monday.
The 1854 presidential pardon, which is valued at $75,000, grants clemency to Noah C. Hanson, who was convicted three years earlier of stowing two slaves in a hiding place under the kitchen floor of his employer’s Washington, D.C., home.
The document is currently the only known presidential pardon of a black man convicted of harboring slaves, according to The Raab Collection, a dealer based in suburban Philadelphia.
“This rare manuscript highlights the important role that African American people in the North played in the Underground Railroad and the risks they took to free slaves,” said Steven Raab, founder of The Raab Collection, owner and seller of the document.
Stanley Harrold, a professor of history at South Carolina State University who has written a book about abolitionists in the nation’s capital that includes the Hanson case, said he knew of no other pardon of its kind.
“There was an earlier pardon by President Fillmore of two white men imprisoned in D.C. for helping slaves escape, but as far as I know the Noah Hanson one is the only presidential pardon for a black man who did something similar,” he said.
Hanson, a free black, was arrested after he was discovered hiding the slaves, who belonged to a South Carolina congressman, in the home of his employer — himself a Southerner who later served as a colonel in the Confederate Army.
Hanson was sentenced to remain behind bars until a $1,080 fine was paid; his fellow abolitionists tried unsuccessfully to raise the funds.
In the signed presidential pardon, Pierce orders Hanson released from prison and from the requirement that “declares he shall be committed a prisoner until said fine and costs be paid.”
Historians don’t know what happened to Hanson after his release from prison, Harrold said.
“He’s one of these people who are just on the edge of history,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ll probably never know his full story.”
Police: Rappers Ja Rule, Lil Wayne arrested in NYC
NEW YORK — “Uh Oh.”
That’s the name of a new song by rappers Ja Rule and Lil Wayne. It also may have been what the two were thinking on Sunday night when police arrested the top-selling hip-hop artists for separate incidents of illegal arms possession.
Ja Rule, 31, of Saddle Brook, N.J., and Lil Wayne, 25, of Miami, were each arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon, police said. Ja Rule’s real name is Jeff Atkins and Lil Wayne’s is Dwayne Carter.
They were arrested shortly after Carter’s concert at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan.
Officers spotted Carter and another man smoking marijuana by a tour bus near 61st Street and Columbus Avenue at about 11:30 p.m., police said. The officers found a .40 caliber pistol and took the two men into custody. Both were charged with criminal possession of a weapon and marijuana.
Atkins was arrested about an hour earlier on West End Avenue. Police said he was in a luxury sedan that was speeding.
Officers stopped the car and arrested the occupants — Atkins, the driver and another man — and found the weapon, police said.
Contact information for the rappers’ managers could not be found early Monday, and there was no immediate response to messages left with their record company, Universal Motown. It also was not immediately clear whether they had attorneys.
Ja Rule rose to fame in the mid-1990s after appearing on a hit song with Jay-Z and later going on to record platinum-selling solo albums.
Lil Wayne’s albums include “Tha Block Is Hot,” “Lights Out,” “Tha Carter” and “Tha Carter II.”
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