Editorial: Police should join solicitor’s effort to weed out bad cases, focus on big ones
By: THE EDITORIAL STAFF
Could a study that set out to tackle racial disparities in our criminal justice system end up reducing the six-year court backlog that is contributing to a sense of revolving-door injustice and lawlessness in Charleston?
That’s the intriguing promise of a commonsense we-can’t-believe-this-isn’t-already-being-done program that 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson is launching in conjunction with a nonprofit that’s studying the work her office does.
As The Post and Courier’s Jocelyn Grzeszczak reports, the solicitor has been working with the Washington-based Justice Innovation Lab and the Charleston Police Department to test an arrest-warrant screening process and now hopes to expand the program throughout Charleston and Berkeley counties. Some states require similar programs, but South Carolina does not.
The program grew out of a study the lab released last year that found that the disproportionately high conviction rate of black men in the circuit was due to disproportionately high arrest rates that didn’t seem to be explained by higher rates of criminal behavior.
