NCJ Number
82303
Date Published
1981
Length
35 pages
Annotation
Findings are presented from public hearings on police, courts, and corrections treatment of minorities in California, and recommendations are presented.
Abstract
The information provided in this report of the Task Force on Incarcerated Minorities is derived largely from public hearings conducted throughout the State. Over 60 percent of California's youth and adult corrections population is now comprised of ethnic minorities, even though they compose only 30 percent of the State's general population. Testimony revealed the perceptions and despair of a large segment of the low-income minority population regarding the poverty, inferior housing and education, cultural rejection, and deteriorating neighborhoods they often experience. These conditions are perceived as spawning the deviant behavior that puts minority populations at high risk of contacting the criminal justice system. Public systems are viewed by minorities as being more geared to punishing them than helping them. Police are viewed as selectively focusing their resources on apprehending offenders in minority neighborhoods, and the courts are perceived as handing out more punitive dispositions for the poor than for the rich. Corrections, which usually means imprisonment for minorities, alienates minorities even further from normative society and is criticized as offering very little that prepares minorities to secure employment and achieve normative adjustment after release. Twenty recommendations include suggestions for improved public defender services, the expansion of alternatives to incarceration, a proportionate use of minorities on juries, and the creation of a correctional ombudsman program. Six additional recommendations describe specific actions for the Secretary of the Health and Welfare Agency. Appended are summaries of special criminal justice problems of Native Americans and the concerns of minorities expressed in testimony at 23 public hearings.