Comment: Lawmakers lose interest in prisons’ racial disparity

By Tomas Keen and Nick Hacheney / For The Herald

Last year, after repeated instances of state violence across the country and the storm of protest this sparked, Washington state lawmakers loudly touted their resolve to address racial disparity; particularly in the criminal legal system.

All things pointed to it being a year when legislation would be driven by data, not fear. Yet the main proposal, which would alter earned time (sometimes called “good time”) on prison sentences, failed to pass. And there’s no talk of bringing it up again. People across the state are left scratching their heads: What happened to concern over disparity?

Many felt it was the perfect storm of purpose and urgency for reforming the criminal legal system.

In February 2020, University of Washington Professor Katherine Beckett released a report with the ACLU showing how state sentencing practices had greatly elevated racial disparity over the last 40 years. Looking at recent numbers, 3 percent of the state’s population identified as Black, yet a staggering 19 percent of people sentenced to prison were black; a rate nearly six times that for whites. The report made clear what many had chosen not to see: Racial disparity was present and glaring right here in blue, progressive Washington.

Fixing this disparity became many lawmakers’ stated purpose.

Then came urgency. In late 2020, covid began raging through our prisons, shining a spotlight on overcrowded and unhealthy conditions. Finally there was an impetus to get many people who no longer posed a threat back into the community.

This mix of purpose and urgency coalesced when Rep. Tara Simmons, D-Bremerton, a former prisoner and newly elected representative, introduced a one-size-fits-most solution — House Bill 1282 — which would have restored available earned time to its original one-third level.

Simmons recounted how the Sentence Reform Act, adopted in the mid 1980s, originally allowed for prisoners to be released early by earning up to one-third off of their sentences. Yet intervening laws had added mandatory-minimum terms and sentence enhancements while simultaneously removing most opportunities for earning time off. As a result, today many prisoners can earn only up to one-tenth off certain portions of their sentence, and none on the rest.

These practices, all initiated during the “tough on crime” obsession of the 1990s, have left Black and Brown defendants targeted with longer sentences and lower levels of earned time, driving racial disparity. Simmons’s bill would have reverse some of these practices and reduce the Black prison population from 19 percent to 11 percent, according to the the state Department of Correction’s Executive Policy Office’s “Increased Earned Time Scenarios” report. Not a perfect solution, but surely a step in the right direction.

Then two hiccups came along. First, the Washington state Supreme Court struck down the drug possession law, which required release or resentencing for many people. And second, the state received covid relief funds from Congress. Suddenly, lawmakers were “too busy” replacing the drug-possession law and no longer worried about budget deficits.

All appetite for HB 1282 vanished. As neither the court’s decision nor the covid relief did anything to mitigate racial disparity, many expected our lawmakers to pick back up with HB 1282 for the 2022 session. It was reintroduced in the House this year, but again failed to advance.

Simmons has abandoned her one-size-fits-most approach and turned instead to something better characterized as “one size fits one.” She introduced House Bill 1692 this session to retroactively remove an aggravating factor from the first-degree murder law, one that mandated a life-without-parole sentence for drive-by shooting, that by her count has been used just once. That bill, as well, has failed to advance this session.

The thousands of people expecting comprehensive sentence reform are no longer wondering what happened to concern over racial disparity: they know lawmakers have resorted to the old standby; just ignore it.

Tomas Keen and Nick Hacheney are incarcerated at the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe. Both are activists for criminal justice reform.