At a time when inequities in criminal justice are the focus of intense national debate, blacks and Latinos are overrepresented at every step in Colorado’s criminal process compared with their numbers in the general population.
Black and Latino Coloradans are disproportionately incarcerated, shot by police, arrested and detained as youth, arrested for marijuana, sent back to prison from parole, and disadvantaged by a criminal record, a Rocky Mountain PBS News examination of state data, records and reports shows.
In 2014, black adults were six times more likely than white adults to be in jail or prison in the state, and Latino adults were nearly 1½ times more likely, according to the analysis.
One cause cited by experts is widely acknowledged discrimination within the system – often discussed as implicit or unrecognized bias. Others cite failures in schools and neighborhoods that clear the path to the criminal justice system.
An analysis of youth offenders during the past six years in the 6th Judicial District, which includes Archuleta, La Plata and San Juan counties, suggests minorities have at times been arrested and detained at higher rates than white children. But the minority population is so small in some sample cases that one arrest or incarceration dramatically skews total percentages.
Still, certain numbers stand out. For example, American Indian youth were 15 times more likely to be arrested than white children in 2012 in the 6th Judicial District, according to data provided by Rocky Mountain PBS News. During that year, 11 Native American children were arrested compared with 87 white kids. But the population of white children is far greater than Native American youth, leading to the disparity.
And black youth were 14 times more likely to be arrested than white children in 2011 and six times more likely to be arrested in 2012, according to the data.
The disparity in the incarceration rate takes a broad toll on the state’s minority residents, experts say.
“You’re absolutely depleting the communities of color of natural resources like fathers, good neighbors, babysitters, carpool drivers,” said Allison Cotton, professor of criminology at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Many factors put someone on the “front door of the criminal justice system,” said Executive Director Stan Hilkey of the Colorado Department of Public Safety. “Why? I don’t have the answer to that. And I’m not sure that any of us do at this point, we’re all working towards that.”
A criminal sentence can carry lifelong consequences, particularly for those of limited means. Many provisions of state and federal law obstruct a return to normal life. Among the restrictions and exclusions: public housing, certain safety net programs and hundreds of specified jobs.
In response to the inequities evidenced by the data, reform efforts are underway in Colorado and nationally.
This year, the state Legislature considered bills to encode a driver’s race and ethnicity in the magnetic strip of their driver’s license to track data on racial profiling, sentencing reform to remove certain mandatory minimums and legislation to help people shut out of employment because of the stigma of a criminal arrest.
In April, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a measure to allow judges to sentence defendants to concurrent sentences rather than consecutive sentences. He also approved a bill that redefined the purpose of parole away from punishment and toward support and supervision of offenders’ individualized needs and risks.
Coloradans, from criminal justice reform advocates to police chiefs, are examining the issues with an eye toward solutions.
Juston Cooper, deputy director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, an advocacy group, urges the state to consider investments in other services, such as public health and education, to enhance public safety.
“Effective crime prevention strategies are not solely in the wheelhouse of the criminal justice system,” he said.
DisproportionateColorado’s experience with mass incarceration mirrors the nation’s.
In 1985, the Legislature doubled sentence lengths for felonies and made parole discretionary in The Mielke-Arnold Bill (HB85-1320). As a result, from 1985 to 2009, the number of prisoners in Colorado skyrocketed to its highest recent number of 23,186 inmates, or up 637 percent during a period that the state’s population grew by 57 percent, according to the legislative Joint Budget Committee. General Fund appropriations to the Department of Corrections increased 552 percent in that period adjusting for inflation, up to $332.6 million.
“Tough on crime” approaches to public safety haven’t worked, reform advocate Cooper said, and the cost to society affects all Coloradans regardless of status, race or ethnicity.
“If you’re a tax-paying state citizen in the state of Colorado, you’re paying for it,” he said. “It matters.”
In 2015, Colorado had 20,304 prison inmates and 9,134 parolees, according to the state Department of Corrections. While Latinos comprised 21 percent of the state’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey, they represented 32 percent of inmates in 2014.
For blacks, the comparison was 4 percent of the population and 18 percent of inmates. Whites were under-represented at 69 percent of Colorado’s population and 45 percent of inmates.
On average, one prison inmate costs taxpayers $36,892 a year in Colorado, according to Department of Corrections 2014-2015 numbers – more money than a year of in-state college tuition at the University of Colorado or Regis University.
The Department of Corrections is just one player in the messy intersection of institutions of the criminal justice system. To get a better picture, researchers tracked the number of people of color at key points in the system, from contact with law enforcement through a parole board decision.
In 2011, the state published a comprehensive report that detailed the level of representation of people of color at each juncture.
While Colorado’s population was 4 percent black in 2008-2009, the composition of adult arrestees during that period was 11.8 percent black. Admissions to the Department of Corrections were 19 percent black. And the number of people sent back from parole with a new crime was 24.7 percent black.
While Hispanics made up 20 percent of the state’s population, they comprised 33.3 percent of DOC admissions and 29.2 percent of people sent back from parole with a new crime. The report did not break out the percent of Hispanics arrested because of lack of arrest data including ethnicity.
Action and inactionFive years after that report, Public Safety’s Hilkey says the state doesn’t know the true extent or cause of racial inequities.
Yet, the state body specifically tasked with finding solutions to racial disparity in the criminal justice system last met February 2015 and is now on permanent hiatus. The Minority Over-Representation Subcommittee is part of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, involving a diverse membership from the fields of defense, prosecution, mental health, prisons and crime prevention.
Commission and subcommittee chairman Hilkey said the group will continue to address issues of racial disparity through other avenues.
Part of the answer, Hilkey said, is understanding bias that we carry around without realizing it, called “implicit bias,” or habits, practices and beliefs that unconsciously prejudice us against certain races or ethnicities.
“Not being white makes you automatically suspicious,” Metro State’s Cotton said, “because of the stereotype of what criminality is.”
Police agencies need to confront underlying subconscious bias head on, Lakewood Police Chief Kevin Paletta said.
“We’ve got a long way to go down this road,” he said.
Durango Herald Staff Writer Shane Benjamin contributed to this report.
