Policy and Practice
Racial disparity in arrests and convictions in Georgia are is a significant and growing social problem. Yet, legislation and policy seems to be lacking in an attempt to solve or even begin to reverse the increasing trend. Georgia has been a special focus of several human rights organizations for some time with regard to the disparity associated with arrests, convictions and sentencing but especially with those having to do with drug laws. In 1996 Human Rights Watch (HRW)a nonprofit organization that seeks to bring awareness to legal and policy issues that are applied unfairly to minorities determined that Georgia has one of the worst race records in the nation with regard to new drug enforcement laws as well as extremely disproportionately applied mandatory sentencing laws with regard to those laws.
HRW determined through careful examination that between 1990 and 1995 3% of whites who qualified for mandatory life sentences received such while 15% of blacks who qualified were sentenced under Georgia's laws received mandatory life sentences of those 77% were charged in cases where possession was of small amounts and 60% where sentences to life for possessing drugs worth less than fifty dollars. Even Georgia law enforcement officials testified that it is simply easier to enforce hew drug laws among minorities as their drug offences more often occur out in the open streets and engender more public complaints as well as simply being easier to monitor, record and observe (HRW, 1996). The findings associated with the 1996 study were then reinforced in another research document in 2008, where again HRW determined Georgia to be one of the worst offenders with regard to the application of new drug laws in the U.S., on the grounds of racial disparity (HRW, 2008). The income disparity issue has...
The results indicated that the indigent defense system contributed greatly to the problem of racial disparity in sentencing and was in need of reformation and was in violation of the constitutional right of council.
The recommendations of the review were to improve and adequately fund defense systems for the states' indigent defendants. The problem in Georgia seems to be that indigent defense is not adequately funded and that there is no centralized system of appropriation for defense, as each county is assigned the responsibility to provide council by whatever means they can, even if the means are not present to do so. The review determined that the burden needs to be more adequately shared by the county and state and some counties took action by creating new systems, while others continue to languish in the cost of an ever increasing population of defendants with very minimal state funding support for defense (Chief Justice's Commission on Indigent Defense, 2002). The demand by the panel for a constitutionally adequate defense system in Georgia did not prove to significantly improve the system and is currently again in need of review. Currently in Georgia, despite more than a decade of awareness of the severity of the racial disparity in arrest, enforcement and sentencing there are no pending laws that directly challenge the issue and as Georgia has continued to seek a "drug free" state with a tough on crime record, they have also continued to discriminate significantly against racial minorities in the application of…
