Editorial: Review of race in Charleston County prosecutions raises more questions

By: THE EDITORIAL STAFF

As a recent analysis by the Justice Innovation Lab and Chicago’s Loyola University concluded: Charleston County’s “disproportionality in arrests may not necessarily be explained by differences in criminal behavior” but “can also be due to law enforcement practices and resource allocation that result in more people of color being stopped and arrested.”

What we can feel better about is the fact that 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson invited independent researchers to review why her office convicts a lot more black people than white people, agreed to keep the review open to the public without knowing what it would reveal, accepted the initial findings rather than making excuses for differences in how black and white defendants are treated, and committed not only to correcting problems in her office but also to helping correct problems throughout the criminal justice system.

Read the complete article here.