Racial Disparities in Incarceration Rates Must Be Solved, Not Studied

Header image taken from Dane County Jail Trends, a presentation to Dane County’s Criminal Justice Council

Instead of committing to incarcerating fewer people, Dane County’s political leadership is seeking to limit the role of a Board that has proven to be more skeptical of endless funding for cages. At the same time, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett is playing political theater with people’s lives, sending local residents to jails in other counties instead of releasing people. Meanwhile, a July 28 presentation from Dr. James Austin of the JFA Institute to Dane County’s Criminal Justice Council shed damning light on the trends behind the population inside the Dane County Jail. As we’ve known all along, racial disparities and policy decisions are to blame for the size of the current jail population. 

The JFA Institute, which works with government agencies to assess criminal justice practices and develop policy improvements, has worked with Dane County in the past. But this latest presentation stems from Resolution 320, which the Dane County Board passed in March of this year. In addition to authorizing an additional $16 million in borrowing for the Jail Consolidation Project, the resolution called on the board, along with the Criminal Justice Council, to hire a consultant to evaluate how Dane County might reduce the jail population long-term. Dr. Austin’s presentation was a step in this process, which will culminate in a final report from the JFA Institute to the Dane County Board later this month.

Titled “Dane County Jail Trends,” Austin’s presentation shared statistics which, despite being familiar, are still shocking and shameful. In Dane County, the incarceration rate for Black people is 1,400 per 100,000, compared to a national incarceration rate for Black people of 616 per 100,000 – more than double the national rate. The incarceration rate for white people in Dane County is 87 per 100,000, compared to a national white incarceration rate of 187 per 100,000.

Austin pointed out that addressing this disparity would reduce the jail population (which he reported as 673 people at the time of his presentation) dramatically, noting that in practical terms, “there’s about 400 African Americans in the jail today. If you were to get your [incarceration] rate down to the US national rate of 616 [per 100,000], that number would drop to below 200.” Going even further, Austin explained that if the incarceration rate for Black people in Dane County was the same as the incarceration for white people, the number of Black people in the jail would be less than 30.

“So this is the driver of your jail population,” said Austin. “The high incarceration rate of African Americans in your county.”

The presentation also included a look at three segments of the jail population that are driven by policy decisions: people involved in the Huber Work Release program, people in jail on probation holds, and people being held as a result of a contract between the Dane County Jail and the federal government. If the Sheriff, judges, and other criminal justice stakeholders were willing to make changes to current policies related to these individuals, this, too, could reduce the number of people currently held at the Dane County Jail.

Austin identified the segment of people being held on cash bail as another area ripe for change when it comes to reducing the jail population, pointing out that on the day before his presentation, there were 33 people in the Dane County Jail with bail set for less than $1,000. A jail population review panel with the authority to modify bails and release people could address this needless incarceration of people for low-level offenses, who are currently only in jail due to their inability to pay. 

Still, Austin emphasized the county’s racial disparities as the place to focus. 

“One of my strongest recommendations is that this really needs to get solved,” said Austin. “Not studied. It needs to get solved. It’s just not enough to show it. Action has to happen to eliminate this disparity. And if you do, you would have, like I said, a jail population that would be somewhere in the 500 range or less.”

In light of these comments, the context of Dr. Austin’s presentation makes these ongoing disparities even more shameful. The statistics shared by Dr. Austin aren’t news. We have known about the horrifying disparities between Black and white arrest and incarceration rates for decades. More recently, many of these same statistics appeared in a report that the JFA Institute prepared for Dane County in April 2021. But over the years, the Dane County’s political leadership has continued to direct far more resources toward building a new jail facility than addressing racial disparities in incarceration rates or even implementing some of the more modest changes the JFA Institute has proposed to reduce the jail population. While Austin’s presentation to the Criminal Justice Council was informative and appreciated, it was also a real-time representation of the board’s tendency to repeatedly study problems and illuminate disparities without taking any action to solve them. 

 As Austin himself pointed out, committing to a new, larger jail facility is committing to a status quo in which the number of people in the Dane County Jail is primarily driven by one of the worst racial disparities in incarceration rates in the country. 

“What kind of struck me is that, when you talk about building a jail system of 825 [beds], that’s kind of assuming that this disparity is going to continue for 25 to 30 years,” said Austin. “And I think that’s such a pessimistic view.” 

You can watch Dr. Austin’s presentation (which starts at ~10:35) or view the slides for yourself.