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Court Racial Study Advances
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com
Oct 22, 2002
By Heidi Bell Gease, Journal Staff Writer 
Protesters demonstrate outside the Pennington County Jail in April 2001 over
what they say were unfair treatment of Indians by the criminal justice
system. A study into their claims continues and will take another year, according to researchers.
Researchers have released preliminary data gathered in a study of South
Dakota's criminal justice system, but say it will take more research to
determine whether American Indians and white people are receiving equal
treatment in the court system.
Gov. Bill Janklow commissioned the study after a U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights hearing at Rapid City in late 1999 drew numerous complaints that race
plays a major part in how crimes are handled in state courts.
Since May 2001, Richard Braunstein, an assistant professor of political
science at the University of South Dakota, has looked at more than 178,000
cases between 1994 and 2000, through records from the Unified Judicial
System, the state Division of Criminal Investigation, and the Department of
Corrections.
Of those 178,000 cases, 24,077 involved at least one felony charge. Analysis
shows that 75.8 percent of those defendants were white, while 17.4 percent
were Indian. Census figures from 2000 show that Indians make up 8.25 percent
of South Dakota's population.
At a glance, the numbers seem to suggest unfairness. But Braunstein cautions
that this data is very preliminary, and that conclusions should not be drawn
until more information can be gathered and compared.
Braunstein said he needs specifics of individual cases, including information
on the defendants' criminal history, personal history, work history, crime
details and other factors in order to make fair comparisons between cases.
"If the system is treating the similar people differently, we have a
problem," he said Monday. "But if it's treating dissimilar people
dissimilarly, then we don't have a problem."
In other words, it's important to look at factors other than race that could
affect court decisions. For example, a white defendant may be released on
bond, while an Indian person accused of the same crime is not released. But
Braunstein noted that judges consider a variety of things when making bond
decisions: whether the defendant has family or a job to keep him from leaving
town, whether he has a history of bond violation, whether the crime was
particularly violent.
The state doesn't keep that kind of information. So researchers have
requested, and received, additional funding and time from the state in order
to complete the study.
Braunstein said researchers will select 400 cases in specific crime
categories from the 178,000 cases analyzed. Those 400 cases will be
researched through interviews with prosecutors, defense attorneys and law
enforcement to fill in details. Then, similar cases can be compared.
"We are going to hope for good cooperation from state's attorneys and law
enforcement, because that's the only way we're going to do it," he said. He
said the process could take another year.
"No one has really accused of us of trying to censure bad findings, or crush
the study in any way. But I can't imagine that people aren't out there
thinking, 'Why haven't these folks produced anything yet? It must be a bad
result that they're trying to hide,'" Braunstein said.
"And I would encourage people to be patient. This is the first study of its
kind in the nation."
Some Indian leaders have asked that researchers give their findings to the
state Legislature.
Contact reporter Heidi Bell Gease at 394-8419 or
heidi.bell@rapidcityjournal.com
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