SJC Exchange Library

Attempts to reform the criminal legal system are often driven by calls to fix the pervasive racial and ethnic disparities within it. However, these reforms, despite their intentions can fail to improve or even exacerbate the same disparities they sought to fix. Despite SJC's success in reducing jail populations, racial and ethnic disparities persist in many communities. So, while improvements have been made in reducing populations of all racial and ethnic groups, the benefits have not borne out equally. This brief uses Measuring Progress data to explore the racial and ethnic disparities in SJC communities and the continued challenges in reducing and eliminating them.