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: The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

OR: Tepid Reception for Racial Impacts Proposal. Sponsor finds unease when 'race' enters fray.

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

Tepid Reception for Racial Impacts Proposal By Jake Thomas /The Portland Observer Sponsor finds unease when 'race' enters fray When Oregon voters jumped on the "get tough on crime" bandwagon in the 1990s by approving Measure 11, they might not have fully understood where it was headed. Measure 11, which removes the sentencing leeway a judge can give a defendant and imposes mandatory minimum prison terms for certain crimes, has caused Oregon's prison population to swell. The Department of Corrections estimated that inmates in Oregon prisons will grow by 41 percent because of the measure. This has been particularly hard for Oregon's minority population. African Americans make up nearly 10 percent of the state's prison population, even though they are about 2 percent of the population...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on July 04, 2009 (boomark / email).