Take a look around you.
See that African American person over there? In Allegheny County, that person is, in general, five times more likely to be criminally charged than a White person.
Oh, there’s more, according to a study released in December 2023 by former Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald and the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute of Politics.
When criminal charges are filed against a person in the county, African Americans are convicted of a felony at nearly twice the rate (9.7 percent to 5.4 percent) as Whites.
Overall, the Allegheny County Jail is filled with African Americans, the report, which studied data from 2017 to 2019, found, while the county as a whole is filled with, well, Whites. Blacks comprise just 13 percent of Allegheny County, but comprise 66 percent of the jail.
The study, which was conducted by the RAND Corporation and RTI International, showed how African Americans have the odds stacked against them in the early stages of the criminal justice process, which contributes to the disproportionate number of African Americans actually inside the jail.
“Among those charged with a crime, Black individuals are 18 percentage points more likely than White individuals to be arrested versus receiving a summons,” the report, obtained by the New Pittsburgh Courier, read. “This gap reflects the racial disparity in the decision to arrest versus receiving a summons. An individual who is arrested has to have a preliminary arraignment in front of a Magisterial District Judge or a senior judge to determine their pretrial release conditions, while an individual who receives a summons is free to remain in the community while their case is adjudicated.”
The researchers determined that while some crimes that are committed by African Americans must be met with an arrest and not a summons by law, “21 percent of the racial disparity in the arrest versus summons decision is caused by differential policing practices in the City of Pittsburgh versus the suburban areas,” the report said.
The report found that among misdemeanor charges, it was the City of Pittsburgh that made the decision to make arrests more so than suburban police districts, by a 61 percent to 27 percent margin.
“Because Black individuals are disproportionately located in the City of Pittsburgh, this disparity results in them being more likely to be subject to these stricter arrest policies,” the report read.
The report looked at the more than 76,000 cases on record in the county over that three-year period from 2017 to 2019. It even tracked the average amount of bail for Blacks versus Whites over that period. For Blacks, the average bail set was $17,093. For Whites, it was $11,569.
“The fact that Black individuals have a higher bail amount indicates they will be less likely than White individuals to be able to pay their bail and be released from jail,” the report read.
And when it comes to pretrial detention, or when a person is held behind bars awaiting trial while still legally innocent, 29.1 percent of Blacks serve some type of pretrial detention when charges are filed against them in Allegheny County. For Whites, according to the report, the number is 16.2 percent.
The researchers met with a wide number of community members and system professionals concerning the racial disparities in the criminal justice system in Allegheny County. In a statement that’s been preached before, but reiterated by the report, the report read that they described Allegheny County as “highly segregated by race and class, reflecting a long history of social and economic discrimination against Black residents. In particular, they noted that predominately Black neighborhoods have been systematically excluded from private and public resources, leading to concentrated poverty and crime.”
The study did reveal that there were a small number of people interviewed who felt that “racial disparities in the local criminal justice system were entirely reflective of Black individuals behaving differently than White people.”
While the report from Pitt’s Institute of Politics, which was commissioned in 2015, gives the public the data surrounding the racial disparities in the criminal justice system, the disparities have been well-documented over the years, and even decades, by community advocates such as Tim Stevens, the Black Political Empowerment Project Chairman and CEO, Brandi Fisher, executive director of the Alliance for Police Accountability, the local NAACP, Urban League, and countless others. Outgoing Pittsburgh City Councilman Rev. Ricky Burgess helped lead a movement to stop Pittsburgh officers from issuing traffic stops in the city for low-level traffic-related offenses in late 2021. The efforts were heralded at the time by much of Pittsburgh’s Black community, but as it stands now, those traffic stops for low-level traffic-related offenses are back on, as the city’s top cop, Larry Scirotto, said changes in state law required at least, for now, those traffic stops to be enforced.
Stevens has stood in front of television cameras in Pittsburgh with the “You and the Police” brochure, a guide for residents as well as police officers to abide by when the two entities interact, say, during a traffic stop or on the street.
Fisher and her team have endlessly fought for better conditions for people at the Allegheny County Jail, along with decrying officers for their handling and treatment of African Americans in the initial stages of interaction.
The report from the Pitt Institute of Politics issued 29 recommendations following its findings, most of which have been already discussed by local community leaders. Its first recommendation was what former Councilman Rev. Burgess discussed, which was to “consider other methods of policing within the City of Pittsburgh that do not rely on the use of pretext stops and other low-priority police-initiated interactions with residents.”
Other recommendations were for law enforcement to be required to document why an individual was arrested for a misdemeanor charge as opposed to receiving a citation; invest in unarmed, trauma-informed crisis intervention services; and prioritize prevention, not punishment.
“As the saying goes,” the report read, “’an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’”
About Post Author
