This is Beyond Repulsive

It appears that some courts have made the conscious decision to imprison poor people for just being poor:

In a recent letter to the United States Sentencing Commission, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sharply criticized the growing trend of evidence-based sentencing, in which courts use data-driven predictions of defendants’ future crime risk to shape sentences. Mr. Holder is swimming against a powerful current. At least 20 states have implemented this practice, including some that require risk scores to be considered in every sentencing decision. Many more are considering it, as is Congress, in pending sentencing-reform bills.

Risk-assessment advocates say it’s a no-brainer: Who could oppose “smarter” sentencing? But Mr. Holder is right to pick this fight. As currently used, the practice is deeply unfair, and almost certainly unconstitutional. It contravenes the principle that punishment should depend on what a defendant did, not on who he is or how much money he has.

The basic problem is that the risk scores are not based on the defendant’s crime. They are primarily or wholly based on prior characteristics: criminal history (a legitimate criterion), but also factors unrelated to conduct. Specifics vary across states, but common factors include unemployment, marital status, age, education, finances, neighborhood, and family background, including family members’ criminal history.

Such factors are usually considered inappropriate for sentencing; if anything, some might be mitigating circumstances. But in the new, profiling-based sentencing regimen, markers of socioeconomic disadvantage increase a defendant’s risk score, and most likely his sentence.

So, you live in the bad part of town (high crime area), you go to jail longer.

You grew up poor, you go to jail longer.

Broken family, you go to jail longer.

Unemployed, you go to jail longer.

From a single parent household, you go to jail longer.

As Hamilton Nolan observes:

Design an economic and political system that requires a great many people to be poor. Pass laws that are far more likely to be broken by poor people. Use a computer to dispassionately predict that poor people will probably break the law more in the future. Then sentence poor people to longer prison terms.

This is a f%$#ing abomination.