LOCAL IMPLEMENTATION:
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
Response to the Periodic Report of the United States to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
February 2008
Prepared by:
Greater Milwaukee Human Rights Coalition
SHADOW REPORT OF THE
GREATER MILWAUKEE HUMAN RIGHTS COALITION
CONCERNING COMPLIANCE WITH
THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION
OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
The Status of Racial Discrimination
in Criminal Justice, Employment, and Housing
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Submitted to the United States Human Rights Network
For Submission to the United Nations
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
November 29, 2007
GREATER MILWAUKEE HUMAN RIGHTS COALITION SHADOW REPORT
Compliance with ICERD in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: The Status of Racial Discrimination in Criminal Justice, Employment, and Housing
Table of Contents
Page
Executive Summary 1
Introduction 3
General Considerations 3
Criminal Justice Issues 4
Right to counsel 4
Representation in the criminal justice system 4
Treatment of prisoners 6
Police brutality/misconduct 6
Felony disfranchisement 7
Employment Issues 8
Employment disparities 8
Employment discrimination 9
Minority-owned businesses 12
Wisconsin Works disparities 12
Housing Issues 13
Homeownership 13
Affordable housing 13
Sales and rental discrimination 14
Mortgage lending discrimination 15
Homeowners insurance discrimination 16
Recommendations 16
ICERD national implementation 16
Criminal justice recommendations 16 Employment recommendations 17 Housing recommendations 18
Conclusion 20
Report Contributors, Endorsing Organizations, and Endorsing Individuals 21
Appendices 22
Appendix 1: Percentages of Racial Groups in State and Local Populations 22
Appendix 2: Black Household Income as a Percentage of White Household Income 23
Appendix 3: Community Testimony #1 24 Appendix 4: MilwaukeeCounty Projected Unemployment 25
Appendix 5: MilwaukeeCounty Combined Occupational Distribution 26
Appendix 6: Percentages of Job Applicants Called Back 27
Appendix 7: Community Testimony #2 28
Appendix 8: Community Testimony #3 29
Appendix 9: Home Purchase Loans in MilwaukeeCounty 30Executive Summary
We welcome the April 2007 US Periodic Report to the UN Committee concerning its compliance with the Convention. This shadow report provides information on US implementation of the provisions of the Convention at state and local levels of government in the state of Wisconsin, particularly in the city and county of Milwaukee. The report focuses on compliance with articles of the Convention that relate to racial discrimination in the areas of criminal justice, employment, and housing. Generally, the US report does not sufficiently address the government’s obligations to be proactive in vindicating the rights guaranteed by the Convention. We therefore also address deficiencies in proactive measures to reduce racial discrimination.
Racial discrimination and disparities are apparent within the criminal justice system in Wisconsin. This report explores recent incidents of police brutality and misconduct against people of color in the Milwaukee area. In addition, African Americans are incarcerated at much higher rates in the state than non-Hispanic whites,1 likely due largely to racial profiling and racial disparities in prosecuting and sentencing. As a result, poor prison conditions disproportionately affect people of color. Moreover, the State of Wisconsin’s low indigency threshold2 to qualify for public defense also has a disparate impact on minorities. Disfranchisement of individuals with felony convictions who have completed their prison terms also occurs at a disparate rate for people of color.3
Significant racial disparities in unemployment rates between people of color and whites exist in Milwaukee County,4 particularly in the city.5 Racial discrimination continues to occur in employment practices in Milwaukee, as well,6 but the city currently has no formal mechanism for investigating patterns of discrimination. People of color are also less likely to be able to access higher-paying jobs,7 and one study found that the city underuses African American-owned contractors, based on their numbers in the market.8 In addition, African-American families in the state are more likely than any other group to participate in the Wisconsin Works (W-2) welfare program, which is fraught with inadequacies.9 African-American and Latino participants in the W-2 program are also more likely than white participants to face sanctions for alleged violations of program requirements.9
1 US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005.
2 Lola Velazquez-Aguilu, Not Poor Enough, 2006 Wisconsin Law Review 193.
3 American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, Voter Fraud is Red Herring Hiding Voter Disfranchisement (June/July 2007 newsletter).
4 Bureau of Labor Market Information and Office of Economic Advisors, Demographic Services Center, and US Census Bureau, Milwaukee County Projected Unemployment and Employment Rates 2008-2009.
5University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for EconomicDevelopment, After the Boom (2004).
6Devah Pager, The Mark of a Criminal Record 30-62(2002); University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute and the Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP, Report Card on Minority and Female Participation in Construction Trade Apprentices in the Milwaukee Area (2006); University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute, Who Gets Construction Jobs and Where? (2006).
7 US Census Bureau,Equal Employment Opportunity Residence Data Results for MilwaukeeCounty (2000).
8 Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd., City of Milwaukee Study to Determine the Effectiveness of the City’s Emerging Business Enterprise Program (2007).
9 Institute for Wisconsin’s Future and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development, Unfair Sanctions, available at (last visited October 10, 2007).
With respect to housing issues, the lack of affordable housing in Milwaukee disproportionately affects people of color, who are more likely to live in poverty.1 Homeownership rates are indeed lower for people of color than for whites in Milwaukee,2 and minorities face discrimination in obtaining mortgage loans and homeowners insurance,3 placing many people of color at the mercy of a tight rental market. Federal housing discrimination complaints for MilwaukeeCounty have been rising since 2003, as well, with racial discrimination accounting for about half the complaints.4
We conclude by offering a number of recommendations for policy changes in the state of Wisconsin and in the Milwaukee area which are consistent with the US government’s obligations under article 2 of the Convention to “review governmental, national and local policies” and to take proactive measures to address and eliminate racial discrimination. Recommendations related to criminal justice include raising the Wisconsin indigency threshold to qualify for public defense and passing state legislation to restore voting rights post-incarceration.
To address disparities in employment, the state should reform the W-2 state welfare program. For example, the state should mandate that all case managers and W-2 supervisory staff be trained in diversity issues and civil rights requirements.5 At the city level, Milwaukee should establish a funded entity to safeguard human rights. The City of Milwaukee should also fund a comprehensive disparity study of racial discrimination in contracting as a potential basis for improvement of the Emerging Business Enterprise Program.1
Housing-related recommendations include increasing funding at city and federal levels for landlord fair housing training and post-purchase counseling services for home buyers, to combat predatory lending. The city should also increase budget funding for the city’s Housing Trust Fund to a meaningfully substantial level. In addition, the Wisconsin Housing Economic and Development Association (WHEDA) should amend its allocations of low-income housing tax credits to prioritize projects that would encourage improved racial equity within the Milwaukee metropolitan area.
1 Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd., City of Milwaukee Study to Determine the Effectiveness of the City’s Emerging Business Enterprise Program (2007).
2 City of Milwaukee Urban Atlas, Summary of Population and Housing Characteristics (2000).
3 Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council, City of Milwaukee Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing, (2005);Gregory D. Squires, Organizing Access to Capital 43-54 (2003).
4 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Bias complaints for housing rise in ’06 (October 7, 2007).
5 Institute for Wisconsin’s Future and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development, Unfair Sanctions, available at (last visited October 10, 2007).
Introduction
- We welcome the April 2007 US Periodic Report to the Committee concerning its compliance with the Convention. However, the experiences of people of color in Wisconsin, especially the Milwaukee area, differ in important ways from the State report’s conclusions on the status of racial discrimination.
- Discriminatory government policies and private industry practices have contributed to highly segregated housing patterns in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. (We define the Milwaukee metro area as the counties of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee.1) Appendix 1 lists the racial composition of Wisconsin, the Milwaukee metro area, MilwaukeeCounty, and the city of Milwaukee.
- In this report, we evaluate patterns of local racial discrimination in the areas of criminal justice, employment, and housing. The focus is on discrimination against people of color as an entire group and against three large groups in the area—African Americans, Latinos, and Hmong refugees. We conclude with several policy recommendations to improve the problems identified. Whether policy changes occur may depend in part upon whether changes occur in attitudes toward race.
- “If the most visible victims of the Depression were African Americans and Hispanics, would we have had the New Deal programs?” asks Jack Murtaugh, board member of the UN Association-Greater Milwaukee Chapter. He continues, “If the most visible returnees from World War II were African Americans and Hispanics, would we have had the GI bill? What role is racism playing in our unwillingness to implement government-sponsored programs to address joblessness and education inequalities among African Americans and Hispanics?”
5. We hope that the illumination of the dire social and economic conditions that people of color currently face will inspire a sense of urgency for change—the same sense of urgency that similar conditions of the past, which affected people of all races, inspired.
General Considerations
6. Article 1.1 indicates that racial discrimination has either the purpose or effect (emphasis added) of negatively affecting human rights and fundamental freedoms. Similarly, Article 2.1 imposes on States Parties a responsibility to promote understanding among all races. Both of these statements call for measures not only to prevent discrimination, but also to proactively work to reduce discrimination.
7. Significantly, the US report states (at ¶ 148) that “[A]rticle 5 does not affirmatively require States Parties to provide or to ensure observance of each of the listed rights themselves, but rather to prohibit discrimination in the enjoyment of those rights to the extent they are provided in domestic law.” The State report further indicates that some of the enumerated rights listed under Article 5 are not explicitly recognized as legally enforceable rights under US law.
8. These statements appear to renounce government responsibility for proactive measures in reducing discrimination, which is a requirement of the Convention, articles 1 and 2. This report will attempt to fill gaps in the State report created by its more narrow definition of responsibility for the elimination of racial discrimination under Article 5.
1US Bureau of the Census, Geographic Boundaries of Metropolitan Areas (2000).
Criminal Justice Issues
9. Right to counsel. As noted by ¶ 152 of the Periodic Report, the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution provides for the right to counsel in all criminal prosecutions that carry a sentence of imprisonment1 for indigent defendants.2 However, states have wide discretion in the execution of this law.3 The state ofWisconsin has a very low indigency threshold to be considered statutorily indigent (meeting legislative criteria for state public defense). The Wisconsin threshold is set at an appalling 33 percent of the federal poverty guideline.3 (Other states, such as Florida, have indigency thresholds of up to 250 percent of the federal poverty guideline.3) Wisconsin defendants with incomes above the state indigency threshold may still be considered constitutionally indigent by county trial courts, which evaluate the ability to retain private counsel based on the federal poverty guideline and fees charged by trial attorneys in similar cases.3 However, the provision of public defense by trial courts lacks any guidelines, resulting in varied provision of public defense by counties.3 An estimated 2,600 people were denied public defenders in Milwaukee County in 2001.4
10. This lack of adequate access to public defense disparately affects people of color in Wisconsin. The poverty rate for African Americans, at 34.9 percent in 2006, was four times greater than for whites (8.5 percent), and the poverty rate for Latinos was three times greater, at 26.8 percent.5 The poverty rate for Hmongs in 2000 was also higher, at 26 percent,6 than the white poverty rate at the time of 6.8 percent.7 The child poverty rate is also much higher for children of color, with 52 percent of African American children, and 36 percent of Latino children in the state living in poverty, compared to nine percent of white children.8
11. In metropolitan Milwaukee, the racial gap in poverty rates in 2000 was the largest of any metro area in the country, and twice the national gap.9 The racial gap between African Americans and whites in income in metropolitan Milwaukee in 2000 was the second worst gap among the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas (Appendix 2). Median annual household income for Hmongs also lagged behind the general population in Wisconsin by $7,893.6 Since Wisconsin has the third largest population of Hmong residents in the country, with 23 percent of the Wisconsin Hmong population living in MilwaukeeCounty,6 this economic disparity is significant.
12. Representation in the Criminal Justice System. The Committee expressed particular concern regarding the stark racial disparity in incarceration rates in the United States in its 2001 concluding observations. Wisconsin has the second highest African American incarceration rate
1 US Constitution, amendment VI.
2Gideon v. Wainwright, 327 US 335, 339 (1963).
3 Lola Velazquez-Aguilu, Not Poor Enough, 2006 Wisconsin Law Review 193.
4 American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, Inadequate Indigent Defense Undermines System’s Fairness, (October 10, 2002).
5 Center on Wisconsin Strategy, State of WorkingWisconsin: Update 2007.
6 University of Wisconsin Extension and University of Wisconsin Applied Population Laboratory, Wisconsin’s Hmong Population: Census 2000 Population and Other Demographic Trends.
7 Census 2000 Supplementary Survey, Poverty Status in the Past 12 Months by Age (White Alone), and Race (2000).
8 National Center for Children in Poverty, Wisconsin Statistics (2006).
9 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development, The Two Milwaukees (2003).
in the US—4,416 per 100,000 African Americans in the state are incarcerated.1 Wisconsin also has the fifth highest black-to-white ratio of incarceration at 10.6 to 1.1
13. Paragraph 165 of the 2007 US report cites two dated research studies2 suggesting that these disparities are primarily related to differential involvement in crime by various racial/ethnic groups, rather than to differential handling in the criminal justice system. However, the same issue of one of the journals containing these studies also contains a research study which found that African Americans receive comparatively harsher sanctions than whites for similar offenses.3 Another study from that issue points out that differing research methodologies evaluating the topic have yielded widely differing results.4 A recent review of social psychological research found that race continues to influence individuals’ decision-making and behavior in the areas of racial profiling, the use of lethal force, and criminal sentencing.5 Discrimination in prosecution could also contribute to the disparity.6
14. Discrimination by Law Enforcement: Racial Profiling. Racial profiling plays an important role in increasing minority arrest rates. A recent example of racial profiling in Wisconsin is local law enforcement officials’ practice of stopping drivers perceived to be immigrants (almost exclusively Latinos).7 During the past five years, local law enforcement officials in communities such as Sauk Prairie, Whitewater, and Stratford have at times inquired about the immigration status of those they stop, and they have contacted immigration officials regarding alleged violations of immigration laws. Almost all violations of immigration law are civil, rather than criminal, and enforcement of civil immigration laws exceeds the authority of local law enforcement.7
15. Discrimination in Prosecution of Cases. Another potential contributor to the racial disparity in Wisconsin prisons is prosecutors’ ability to exercise wide discretion over whether to charge a defendant, and to select which specific charges the defendant receives.6 On a positive note, The Vera Institute of Justice will be working with the chief prosecutors and their staffs in three jurisdictions, including the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, to track various race-based indicators.6 Such research could be the basis for reforms.
16. Discrimination in Sentencing. Racial disparities in sentencing are also evident in Wisconsin, with a higher percentage of black and Latino/a offenders receiving prison sentences (versus probation) than whites.8 In Wisconsin, the disparity in new prison sentences in 1999 was 20.4 to 1 for African Americans compared to whites.9 The disparity in Wisconsin prison admissions is especially high for young people with drug offenses, with African American youth
1 US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005.
2 Alfred Blumstein, Racial Disproportionality of US Prison Populations Revisited, 64 U. Colo. L. Rev. 743 (1993); Michael Tonry, Racial Disproportion in US Prisons, 34 Special Issue Brit. J. Criminol. 97 (1994).
3 Debra L. Dailey, Prison and Race in Minnesota, 64 U. Colo. L. Rev. 761 (1993).
4 Samuel L. Myers, Jr., Racial Disparities in Sentencing, 64 U. Colo. L. Rev. 781 (1993).
5 R. Richard Banks, et al., Discrimination and Implicit Bias in a Racially Unequal Society,94 Cal. L. Rev. 1169 (2006).
6Vera Institute of Justice, Prosecution and Racial Justice (April 2007).
7American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin Foundation, Current Litigation Docket, Immigration Enforcement by Local Law Enforcement (August 2007).
8 Wisconsin Sentencing Commission, Race & Sentencing in Wisconsin (2007).
9 Pamela Oliver, Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice in Wisconsin, available at (last visited October 2, 2007).
receiving more prison admissions for drug offenses.1 New sentences for whites are primarily for violent offenses, while new offenses for African Americans are primarily for drug offenses.2 Federal cocaine sentencing policy,3 which provides for significantly harsher prison sentences for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine,4 could contribute to these disparities.