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The Ferguson to Madison rally Tuesday afternoon at Madison's City County Building included a Die In before participants went in to express their views to the County Board about spending money to study a new county jail.
The current jail is overcrowded and in terrible shape. Something needs to be done, but a lot of people wonder if a new $130-million jail is the answer. How about incarcerating fewer people and using some of the money saved to explore alternatives? Although crime rates have been dropping, we're incarcerating more people than ever -- especially black males.
Although Madison prides itself on its liberalism, the racial inequities in Madison and Dane County are anything but liberal, as documented in a recent Wisconsin Council on Children & Families report (download at the link). Black arrest rates in Dane County are much higher than the national average:
Dane County’s juvenile justice numbers also show disparities
that are wider than those found elsewhere in
the state or nation. In 2010, the county’s black youth
arrest rate was 469 per 1,000, compared to 77 per 1,000
for whites, yielding a disparity ratio of 6.1 to 1. To put
this into context, black teens in Dane County in 2010
were six times more likely to be arrested than whites
living here, while black youth in the rest of the state
were just three times as likely to be arrested as whites,
and nationally black youths were only a little more
than twice as likely to be arrested than their white
peers.
We can do better. We must do better.
Tony Robinson's cousin struggles to find words for an emotional moment when speaking to a gathered crowd at the Governor's Mansion. His words were powerful.