Racial Disparities in Resisting Arrest Charges
Santa Clara County
The Mercury News recently highlighted the data gathered in partnership by the office of Jeff Rosen, Santa Clara County District Attorney, and BetaGov, the cost-free research initiative run by Litmus' Director Angela Hawken, which demonstrated disparities between Latinos resisting arrest and their proportion of the local population.
“A hard question is coming from our community and from communities across America: Is our justice system fair to everyone?” Rosen said in a statement. “One study cannot answer that question, but it is a step, here in our office and in our community, toward coming to grips with the troubling parts of our system where there is racial inequality.”
As part of the report, “Race and Prosecutions,” prosecutors and other DA staff compiled case data from 2013 to 2015 that showed, among other findings, that Latinos account for 44 percent of all felony defendants in the county and 46 percent of misdemeanor defendants, despite making up just 26 percent of the county’s population.
The findings parallel data compiled by the San Jose Police Department and analyzed last year by [The Mercury News], which found similar racial disparities in the frequency Latinos and blacks are stopped and detained on the street
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