WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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A report finds Blacks in Monroe County are disproportionately affected by the criminal justice system.
The report was compiled by the Monroe County chapter of the NAACP and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington’s Racial Justice Task Force.
A press conference and public discussion addressing the report and recommended policy changes will be held at 11 a.m., Wednesday, December 12, at the Second Baptist Church in Bloomington.
Monroe County NAACP President Jim Sims spoke to WFHB about the report, which has been in development since 1997.
Less than four percent of Monroe County residents are Black, but last year African-Americans made up over a quarter of those imprisoned from Monroe County. Twenty-seven percent of inmates in the Indiana Department of Corrections from Monroe County in 2017 were Black; over seven times their share of the county’s population.
The report, which looks at data over the past twenty years shows that’s a trend. It found similar over-representation in the Monroe County jail. Blacks made up 15.7% of the Monroe County jail population in 2017, over four times their share of the county’s total Black population.
