Racial Discrimination in Prosecution Decisions

Is the chief prosecutor of Hennepin County (Minneapolis and vicinity) violating the Equal Protection Clause by directing prosecutors to consider the defendant’s race in their charging decisions? Hans Bader has this post at Liberty Unyielding.

Bader’s answer is “yes,” and I am inclined to agree. KARE 11 in Minneapolis has obtained a copy of the policy and posted this article, but they didn’t post the policy itself. I would like to see it. If it is sufficiently egregious, it might even amount to a criminal violation of federal civil rights law.

The underlying principle is quite simple. Justice is an individual matter, not a group matter. When someone breaks the law, the consequences should be based on what he did, what his intent was, and what he has done before. That is justice. Demographic labels are irrelevant. Group statistics are relevant only to the extent that they demonstrate discrimination. Group “disparities” that result from different crime rates among groups are a reflection of reality and not a problem in themselves.