George Bridges, a sociologist and acting dean of undergraduate education at the University of Washington, has long studied racial disparity in the criminal-justice system, which he says affects racial minorities and the poor to a greater degree than whites. That blacks are imprisoned at a higher rate than whites under the state's three-strikes law mirrors what some attorneys, judges, sociologists and others who monitor the criminal-justice system say they long have known: Young black males are more likely to be sentenced to prison they are more likely to be sentenced and incarcerated for drug offenses and they are more likely to be arrested for violent and property crimes than are their white counterparts. The commission's analysis doesn't explain why the statistical differences occur, and the report does not suggest that racial bias exists - a point underscored by commission members, who are charged with evaluating the system and who already have suggested some modifications to the law. Asian/Pacific Islanders are 6 percent of the population but less than 1 percent of three-strike lifers. Hispanics are 6 percent of the population and 4 percent of three-strike lifers. Other results show: Native Americans, 1 percent of the population, make up 3 percent of three-strike lifers. The report analyzed 2000 census data, excluding people who identified themselves as multiracial, with state sentencing data from 1994 through 2000, excluding those sentences in which race or ethnicity was unknown or was identified as 'other.' While 83 percent of the state's population is white, 55 percent of those imprisoned for life under the law are white. The report shows blacks make up 3 percent of the statewide population but 37 percent of the state's three-strike lifers.

The 8-year-old law, intended to lock up the state's worst criminals, is resulting in life sentences for African Americans at a much higher rate than for whites, based on population, according to a recent state Sentencing Guidelines Commission report. These so-called 'persistent offenders' - 179 total - have been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole under Washington's 'three strikes' law. Some have murdered, raped and burglarized. They have repeatedly robbed and assaulted.

Irredeemable vol 3