When Will It End?

I'm shocked, shocked that this is happening in the U.S.

From HuffPo...

An African-American convicted of a low-level drug crime in Cook County is eight times more likely than his white counterpart to face prison time for it, according to a new report released yesterday.

The report, published by the Disproportionate Justice Impact Study Commission, analyzed arrest data from 2005, the most recent year that complete data is available. It was commissioned by the General Assembly in 2008 to research the notion that minorities -- and particularly young black men in inner cities -- were disproportionately subjected to drug arrests, prosecution and sentencing.

Class 4 possession laws, the least severe felony charges, accounted for the majority of racial disproportionality in incarceration, the Commission writes. Few of those charged only with Class 4 (and not with some other crime, drug or violent) were sentenced to jail terms. But the overwhelming majority of those who were, by an eight-to-one ratio, were black.

Remember this is Chicago, I can only imagine how much greater the disparity is in the south.

I'm hopeful that in a second term Obama will put on his agenda ending injustices like this. There's one rational and proven way to solve the problem.