FIU study says Jacksonville prosecutors' 'color-blind' approach to cases creates inequality
Katherine LewinResearchers at Florida International University found that prosecutors in the Jacksonville and Tampa state attorney's offices broadly embrace a "color-blind" approach to their work and "argue that race should be disregarded" when deciding who to prosecute and for what, according to a study published in the journal Criminology last year.
The author argues that the color-blind approach perpetuates racial inequality in the legal system and erodes the social, political and economic well-being of people of color.
The study, “No idea whether he’s black, white, or purple”: Colorblindness and cultural scripting in prosecution, also found that prosecutors believe they can't play as large of a role as law enforcement can in improving equality between races in the legal system.
"The system is so rigid in a way, and it really leads to people feeling like, 'There's nothing that I can do about racial disparities,'" said Rebecca Dunlea, an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at FIU. "There's not really a good way to go about being race-conscious, or at least doesn't seem like there is when you're bound by all these laws and all of these very formal policies."
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Dunlea works on a research team that partners with prosecutors' offices across the state and authored the color-blind study published in Criminology. In May 2018, Melissa Nelson's office provided a complete list of prosecutors and the researchers randomly selected 25 prosecutors across levels of seniority and asked them to participate in the study. Ultimately, 25 prosecutors from Jacksonville agreed to be interviewed.
Dunlea analyzed the interviews conducted by the FIU researchers with 47 different prosecutors in the Jacksonville and Tampa jurisdictions in 2018.
In the interviews, prosecutors admitted that while there are racial disparities in the legal system, they believe that the best way to handle racial inequalities is to not consider the race of defendants, victims or witnesses when making case decisions, according to the study. Prosecutors denied that race factored in their legal decisions at all, according to the study.
The Times-Union contacted the state attorney for the 4th Judicial Circuit of Florida for comment but has not heard back. It's not clear whether prosecutors still believe a completely color-blind approach is the best.
'Caught in the quagmire of American politics'
Dunlea argues that remaining color blind leads prosecutors to disregard racial disparities and conclude that systemic racism does not play a part in the system. It also limits prosecutors' ability to hold law enforcement accountable for unequal policies and practices, the study concluded.
People of color are disproportionately represented in the legal system. Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons in the United States at nearly five times the rate of whites, and Latin people are 1.3 times as likely to be incarcerated than whites, The Sentencing Project found.
Dunlea also said the color-blind approach creates "cultural scripts" that contribute to stereotypes and unequal prosecution of people of color, including beliefs that poverty, single-parent households and lack of education cause crime. And that each case's details are unique, so race can't be considered.
It's the part of the study that Dunlea found the most interesting. She said it's this belief that makes it so prosecutors are "unable to think more broadly about racial disparities."
Connell Crooms, one of the "Jax 5," a group of activists who were arrested at a Hemming Park rally against a U.S. missile attack in Syria, said that despite his experience in the legal system he doesn't think all prosecutors think people charged with crimes are "bad."
"I think that they're caught in the quagmire of American politics," Croom said. "That's what we have to have to change."
He thinks having a stronger "social approach" in law enforcement and prosecution would cut down on the number of people sent into the legal system. It would require significant changes to the system, so it "empowers" people instead of punishing them.
"[Prosecutors] have the right to charge at their discretion, if they want to charge, whether it's a federal crime, whether it's a misdemeanor, or making it a warning," Crooms said. "But they also have more interest in not doing that because many of our state attorneys, prosecutors officers, are elected and they get their money from the prison industry to keep running and to keep Black and brown people in prison."
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Dunlea's study has more specific recommendations for prosecutors: educating them about the ways that the criminal justice system perpetuates crime and disparity, as well as satellite offices, embedded community prosecutors and walk-in reporting of crimes.
"If there are going to be big reforms that really have a big impact, they're not just going to be policies that are strictly related to race," Dunlea said. "They're going to be policies that reshape how prosecutors think about their work in general and how they make decisions and how they decide which cases to proceed with."
Katherine Lewin is the enterprise reporter at the Times-Union covering criminal and social justice issues in Northeast Florida. Email her at klewin@jacksonville.com or follow on Twitter @KatherineMLewin. Contact her for her Signal number to share tips and documents. Support local journalism!