Unequal Justice: A Question of Color.

Americans have been led by television and newspapers to believe that the Rodney King beating and the subsequent verdict are typical of the treatment blacks receive from the police and courts. The media characterization of the U.S. criminal-justice system as racist is accepted by most blacks and a substantial minority of whites even though empirical evidence does not support that thesis.

The media, in their focus on the atypical (and thus newsworthy) event, are apparently unaware that researchers have failed to find evidence of systematic and pervasive racial discrimination in the processing of offenders. For example, Criminology, the journal of the American Society of Criminology, in 1987 published a review essay of the three most comprehensive books on the extent of racism in the American criminal-justice system, and found little evidence of discrimination. In 1983 the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the research on sentencing and found "no evidence of a widespread systematic pattern of discrimination in sentencing." And Patrick Langan of the U.S. Department of Justice reported in the 1985 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology that the disproportionate number of crimes committed by blacks, as measured by the National Crime Survey (an annual, random survey of 135,000 Americans), almost totally accounted for the racial disparity in U.S. prisons for 1973, 1979, and 1982.

The above research has seldom, if ever, been reported in the media, but you can rest assured that Unequal Justice: A Question of Color, by Coramae Richey Mann, an African-American professor of criminology at Indiana University, will receive inordinate attention since it provides support for the media view that "the system" is racist. In the presentation of "news," which headline is easier to imagine: "New Study Finds No Evidence of Discrimination," or "New Study Finds Pervasive Racism"?

Professor Mann's review of the published literature on this controversial question is exhaustive (254 pages of text, 10 of footnotes, and 30 of bibliography) and contains the best available argument for the discrimination thesis. However, most even of those seeking a statement of and supporting evidence for the "minority perspective" will find her thesis too radical. Professor Mann claims that the racist criminal-justice system of today has been implemented by the white male capitalist elite to "maintain its hegemony" since the "means of economic and political control" used in the past "are no longer morally acceptable."

She maintains that the goal of the racist system today is to "warehouse" blacks and other minorities in prison and to expand the "criminal justice enterprise" so as to provide jobs for the majority group in the law industry - law-enforcement officers, probation officers, and lawyers - and in the construction industry. In short, she presents a quasi-Marxist conspiracy thesis similar to that of Jeffrey Reiman (in The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Prison), suggesting not only that the system is racist but that it is intentionally so, as part of some grand perpetual plan to subjugate minorities.

Professor Mann presents a good summary of past abuses against minorities (e.g., lynchings of blacks, wars against American Indians) and her own interpretation of research literature that demonstrates (to her) racial discrimination in the enforcement of criminal law. However, she provides no evidence for a connection between the past and (alleged) present discriminatory systems. The reader will also search in vain for any evidence of a capitalist conspiracy.

Some might even find Professor Mann's thesis and indeed her whole book racist, as she constantly attributes evil racist choices to those whites who designed and work in the criminal-justice system while suggesting that black cops and judges are always fair-minded and pure of motive, and that black criminals, whether burglars or killers, are either "political prisoners" or victims reacting to poverty and racism.

Professor Mann even extends her thesis to the academy: declares that only minority researchers should examine the etiology of black crime, for only they can "understand the nuances of the subject matter." She seems to see the world as made of "them" and "us" and attributes evil motives to "them" and benign motives to "us."

Persons less determinedly parti pris on the subject (i.e., 99 per cent of Americans) would be more likely to suggest that blacks account for 50 per cent of American prisoners because they account for 50 per cent of the "serious" crimes. Though there is considerable research supporting the nondiscrimination thesis, such research is ignored or explained away here while research demonstrating racial disparities at various points in the criminal-justice system is presented uncritically and in great detail. Even outrageous claims (e.g., "It is not uncommon for white offenders to blacken their faces in order to disguise themselves and be mistaken for blacks in the commission of crimes") that support her thesis are quoted approvingly.

The author dismisses in a couple of sentences the fact that blacks are arrested at far greater rates than whites (by using "across-race analysis") and instead devotes several pages to the fact that the pattern of white and minority criminality (by using "withingroup analysis") is similar. For example, she focuses on the fact that violent crime accounts for only 7.7 per cent of black arrests (and 3.3 per cent of "Euro-American" arrests) while less serious crimes account for 73.9 per cent of black arrests. Her argument seems to be: Since black and white criminality is similar in pattern why is so much attention given to the ratio of black as compared to white criminality? The answer, obvious to anyone but Professor Mann, is that the greater rate - not the similar pattern - is the cause of greater black incarceration.

Professor Mann thus appears to argue that black offending is not greater than white offending, while at the same time she suggests that the greater level of black than white offending is the result of poverty and discrimination. But if black and white offending are equal, how can the equal level of black offending be the result of discrimination? And what then causes the equal rate of white offending?

Unequal Justice argues, as we have seen, that blacks (as well as Hispanics, Indians, and Asians) are disproportionately represented in prison because they are unfairly selected for discriminatory treatment by the pohce and courts to ensure their subjugation. But the author's "disproportionate incarceration to design" argument is not consistent. She ignores the fact that incarceration disparities by sex and age are far greater than those pertaining to race. The black/white ratio is 8 to 1, for example, but the male/ female ratio is 19 to 1. However, Professor Mann does not suggest that this disproportion proves the existence of a sexist conspiracy. Would she argue that the system that disproportionately incarcerates young males was purposely so designed by old women?

When Professor Mann turns to recommendations, she pleads for greater numbers of minorities in decision-making roles in the criminal-justice system. Yet she fails to explain why, in recent years, greater numbers of black policemen and black judges have resulted in a continued increase in the prison racial disparity. When pressed to explain this, she merely falls back on the theory that the black police and judges have been co-opted by the ideology of institutional racism. This theory comes close to suggesting that if black officials have not made a difference, they are little more than Uncle Toms. A better explanation would suggest that black workers in the criminal-justice system make similar decisions to those of white workers because both are making decisions based on the merits of the cases rather than on race.

It is, finally, difficult to discern the policy implications of Unequal Justice, other than that the U.S. should abandon its capitalist economy and reject the racist criminal-justice system designed by the capitalist elite. And substitute what? Perhaps the old Russian criminal-justice system? Or should the current Cuban criminal-justice system serve as a model?

One might also wonder why an author who believes that the criminal justice system is "selecting out" blacks for discriminatory treatment at the point of arrest, conviction, and sentencing does not propose racial quotas for arrest and prison (as proposed by Yale sociologist Wendell Bell) and for the death penalty (as called for by the Racial Justice Act currently before the United States Congress). If blacks make up 12 per cent of the general population and 12 per cent of the offenders, why not require that no more than 12 per cent of arrestees and prisoners be black? If it is unjust for our prison population to be 50 per cent black, what percentage would Professor Mann find acceptable?

Follow Professor Mann's arguments through to their logical conclusions, and you get questions like these. But she is not in the habit of rigorous thinking, so readers should not look for them to be either asked or answered in this book.

Mr. Wilbanks is the author of The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System (Brooks/ Cole Publishing).