Disparity found in sentences for drugs

Study: Race, urban-rural divide are key indicators

A new report on Arizona’s criminaljustice system highlights disparities in sentencing between urban and rural counties, as well as disproportionate sentencing of Hispanic people and black people for drug sentences statewide.

The “Cost to Communities” report — released Thursday by FWD.us, a bipartisan non-profit founded by California business and tech leaders — is the second in a series of three. It dives into the cost of the criminal-justice system to Arizona residents — taxpayers and communities alike.

At the state level, the report shows that communities of color are disproportionately sentenced to prison and spend longer times behind bars in some circumstances.

“Prison population and growth in

the population is not felt equally across the state,” said Felicity Rose, director of criminal-justice research at FWD.us. “Depending on where you live, the likelihood of going to prison is not felt equally across the state.”

The report follows research, released in September by the organization, that encourages criminal-justice reform. The first report, “Arizona’s Imprisonment Crisis,” focused on Arizona having the fourth-highest imprisonment rate in the country, with a prison population that grew twice as fast as the state’s population from 2000 to 2017.

This second report analyzes state prison admissions from counties, using admission data from 1985 to 2017.

Arrests for marijuana possession illustrate one of the report’s key findings: that minorities face prison time disproportionately.

“Hispanic people comprise 31 percent of Arizona’s resident population and 32 percent of arrests for marijuana possession, but almost 60 percent of the people admitted to prison for that crime,” the report says.

Hispanic people are also disparately sentenced for marijuana distribution, representing 42 percent of arrests for marijuana distribution and 81.5 percent of the people sent to prison for distribution

Despite black people constituting a racial group one-eleventh the size of white people in Arizona, and research that says black and white people use marijuana at a roughly equal rate nationwide, the two groups represent near-equal percentages of the people admitted to prison in Arizona for marijuana possession.

In five of Arizona’s 15 counties, black people are admitted at a rate three times their proportion of the county’s population.

According to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, the disproportionate racial outcomes are not a “consequence of any biased decision-making” in his office.

“A couple of times, I’ve done a data review to look at a demographic breakdown of our submittals based upon race,” Montgomery said.

A review of all cases submitted to the county by Montgomery’s office found that among cases submitted to his office, the percentage of cases that involved African-American, Caucasian and Hispanic individuals remained nearly consistent with those that were filed, pleaded, dismissed and sentenced by race.

“There’s no statistical difference between how cases are submitted and how cases are resolved and how they are charged,” Montgomery said.

Yet consistent proportions of different racial groups across the criminaljustice process do not depict that some individuals may be charged for the same offenses that others had dismissed, according to Dr. Cassia Spohn, director of Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

She said an analysis would need to compare each racial group according to specific drug crimes, such as marijuana or cocaine possession, and any analysis of sentencing outcomes needs to control for previous criminal history.

“There’s a lot of variation among drug offenses in terms of severity and the sentence that would be required under the statute,” Spohn said.

According to the report and Spohn, higher imprisonment rates for communities of color are not unique to Arizona. The report says bias occurs “at numerous points within the criminal justice system.”

Spohn, whose research uses federal data as well as data from three major cities, said blacks and Hispanics are more likely than similarly situated whites to be sentenced to prison, even when controlling for criminal history, seriousness of the crime and other relevant factors.

Prison isn’t used for first- or secondtime offenders of non-dangerous crimes, but on the third offense, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office offers a deal that would require an individual to plead guilty to a felony, even when the crime is a non-violent offense, according to Montgomery.

Arizona state statute directs local government to use probation or diversion offenders for first-time, non-serious offenders. The state is also one of three that require individuals to serve out 85 percent of their time.

The report compares Maricopa County’s prison admissions to those in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which has similar demographics and a similar crime rate.

“Maricopa sends six times as many people to prison as Miami-Dade and increased admissions to state prison by 33 percent while prison admissions from Miami-Dade have fallen 46 percent,” the report says about admissions from 2000 to 2017.

The two counties share a strong drop in crime from 2000 to 2016, as Maricopa County’s crime rate fell 46 percent and Miami-Dade’s crime rate dropped 54 percent.

The report says that Miami-Dade, which saw a drop in crime while not increasing its rate of prison admissions, is not unique, and 32 of the 50 states have reductions in both crime and imprisonment.

According to the report, Maricopa County also uses a sentencing “enhancement” that can add time for repeat offenders more frequently than other counties in the state.

Montgomery, who had not seen the report at the time of writing, said the state’s reduction in crime is assisted by focusing on sending to prison repetitive offenders who would otherwise be adding to the crime rate. “We’re also seeing a reduction in the number of people going to prison because of our diversion programs,” Montgomery said.

“In terms of being sent to prison, more people per capita are going to prison from the rural counties,” Rose said.

Graham County, with a population under 38,000, sent 46.2 people to prison for every 10,000 residents, and 37 of these were convicted of non-violent crimes.

Maricopa and Pima had the fifth- and third-lowest admissions rates — 20.7 and 20.3 per 10,000 residents, respectively.

The average length of prison sentences varied widely across the state, ranging from 32.9 months in La Paz to 57.4 months in Maricopa. For individuals in state prison for non-violent crimes, the prison sentences dropped to 25 months for La Paz and 43 months in Maricopa. The two most urban counties, Maricopa and Pima, had the longest sentence lengths.

“I would expect us to be sending people with higher sentences, because we focus our efforts on who we send to prison to those who have committed more serious crimes,” Montgomery said.