(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-03-09 11:47

Racial discrimination in America's justice and law enforcement is serious. William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education,once said that the only way to lower the crime rate in America was for all black women to have abortion. In America, black criminals tend to get heavier penalties than their white counterparts. According to the State of Black America 2005 issued by the National Urban League, blacks who are arrested are three times more likely to be imprisoned than whites once arrested, blacks are sentenced to death four times more often than whites, and a black person's average jail sentence is six months longer than a white's for the same crime. A December 2005 study by the University of Maryland indicated those who killed a white victim were 2 to 3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed anon-white; but black offenders who killed white victims were nearly 2.5 times more likely to be sentenced to death than white offenders who killed white victims and 3.5 times more likely to be sentenced to death than black offenders who killed black victims. Although blacks are just 12.2 percent of the American population, 41 percent of American prisoners detained for more than one year are blacks, and 8.4 percent of all black men between the ages of 25 and 29 are behind bars. According to reports issued by the Human Rights Watch and other organizations, following the Sept. 11attacks, at least 70 people, all but one Muslim, were held as "material witnesses" under a narrow federal law that permits the arrest and brief detention of "material witnesses". One-third of the 70 confirmed material witnesses were incarcerated for at least two months, some were imprisoned for more than six months, and oneactually spent more than a year behind bars. According to a report by the Washington Observer weekly in its 42nd issue in 2005, Chinese American Muslim chaplain James Yee was charged with crimesof espionage and mutiny, which potentially carry the death penalty. Because there were no evidence to support the allegations,the charges were later quietly dropped. The case was quoted by the media as one of the most serious judicial wrongs in American history.

Violent crimes against ethnic minorities have been increasing in America. According to a FBI report issued in October 2005, of the 9,528 victims of hate crimes in 2004, 53.8 percent were victims of racial prejudice, and 67.9 percent were blacks. Among the hate crime offenders, 60.6 percent were whites. According to statistics, blacks are twenty times more likely than whites to be a victim of hate crimes. In Los Angeles, 56 percent of hate crimeswere targeted at blacks.