Outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour granted a generous 222 acts of clemency in his last few days in office. But his decision has highlighted questions about systemic racism in the parole system in Mississippi and other states. Two-thirds of the prison population in Mississippi is Black, but only one-third of Barbour’s pardons went to Black inmates.
While race was not mentioned in the applications, the pattern seen in Barbour’s decisions is reflected nationwide. ProPublica, an independent news organization, found that white convicts were four times more likely to receive a presidential pardon than Black inmates. ProPublica pointed to factors that include the financial resources of defendants, levels of education, and cultural differences between Black convicts and mostly white parole boards. “Race [still] emerged as one of the strongest predictors of a pardon,” the ProPublica team wrote. Despite continued rhetoric to the contrary, racism still prevails in the U.S. “justice” system.
