End Racial Disparities in Washtenaw County Legal System

For years elected leaders have shrugged and claimed they lacked the data to do anything about the racial bias we know exists in the criminal legal system here in Washtenaw County. We don’t lack the data anymore.

Citizens for Racial Equity in Washtenaw (CREW) spent months documenting felony case records from the Washtenaw County Court website. They analyzed thousands of charging decisions by prosecutors and sentencing decisions by judges and found harmful racial disparities. The data is discussed in CREW’s just-issued report, “Race to Justice: Citizens for Racial Equity in Washtenaw’s Report on Racial Disparities in the Washtenaw County Criminal Legal System”. Download here: https://www.citizensforracialequitywashtenaw.org/.

ICPJ is supporting CREW’s call to action. Please contact elected Washtenaw County officials and urge them to act immediately on the recommendations in “Race to Justice”.

Suggested text of the letter to send are provided -- and you can modify as you see fit. You can write letters to Washtenaw County Chief Judge Kuhnke (version 1); Members of the Washtenaw Board of Commissioners (version 2); the Washtenaw County Circuit Judges and the Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court (version 3); selected Washtenaw County officials within the legal system (version 4); and MI State legislators serving Washtenaw County (version 5). Please take the time to send a letter to each of these five (5) groups.

Read the letter from ICPJ's Board Member and CREW contributor, Rev. Joe Summers: https://www.icpj.org/

Thank you!

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