More on the Gender Issues Raised by the L.A. County Jail Early Release Policy
Eugene Volokh has a more detailed analysis of the constitutional questions of gender inequality raised by the selective early release policy at the L.A. County jail (discussed here the other day).
If the policy is unconstitutional due to a disparate impact on women, then:
- Does the government have to build more bathrooms for women, if building the same number leads to longer lines for women’s restrooms?
- Is the death penalty unconstitutional because almost no women are executed? What about the entire criminal justice system, which punishes far more men than women?
The entire criminal justice system is just as “unconstitutional” because of that as it is because a disproportionate number of black men are in the system. It’s amazing how you hear people throwing stats around about black incarceration as if they were running a fantasy baseball league, but no one has a response to the riposte that if they’re right, the whole criminal justice system is biased against men.
The most recent information from the Bureau of Justice Statistics: “There were 129 female prison and jail inmates per 100,000 women in the United States, compared to 1,366 male prison and jail inmates per 100,000 men.”
Attila (Pillage Idiot) (dfa1f1) — 6/1/2006 @ 11:43 am