Source: Robert JHansen: Davis Vanguard
“We’ve seen it time and time again where a person of color is given a harsher punishment for the same crime a non-person of color commits,” McCarty said. "Creating a system where a person’s race is unknown during the time of initial charging is imperative. It is long past time we start addressing the issue of punishing a person based on the crime and not the color of their skin."
A bill aimed at reducing the potential for unconscious bias in the criminal justice system passed the California State Assembly yesterday by a vote of 72-0.
AB 2778 or the “Race-Blind Charging” bill would require the Department of Justice to develop and publish “Race-Blind Charging” guidelines beginning in January 2024, whereby all prosecuting agencies, as specified, implement a process to review a case for charging based on information, from which all means of identifying the race of the suspect, victim, or witness have been removed or redacted.
The bill, authored by Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, was modeled after the Yolo County District Attorney’s Race Blind Charging program, which began May 2021.
Read more at: https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/05/race-blind-charging-bill-passes-state-assembly-unanimously/