Most states have no black elected prosecutors | MSNBC

The study also draws a direct link from the prominence of white prosecutors to a lack of indictments in cases over the past year in which police have killed black men and women.

The data, gathered by the Center for Technology and Civil Life and published by the Women’s Donors Network, examines the racial and gender makeup of the more than 2,400 elected city, county and district prosecutors, as well as state attorneys general, serving in office during the summer of 2014.

Researchers from the San Francisco, California-based Women Donors Network (WDN), an advocacy and philanthropic group aiming to maximize women’s involvement in progressive causes, tracked the race and gender of 2,437 directly elected prosecutors across the US.

White Americans make up 95% of elected prosecutors across the U.S, according to a study that cites the non-indictments of white police officers in the high-profile deaths of unarmed black men as the “shocking” reality of a disproportionate and non-diverse criminal justice system that relies on prosecutorial power.

In 14 states, all elected prosecutors were white. The report found 16 percent of elected prosecutors were white women, while only 4 percent of those elected were minority men, compared with 1 percent of minority women. Indeed, it is in the prosecutor’s hands to decide whether to bring criminal charges, or if and for how long to negotiate a prison sentence. More than half (33) of the 61 identified black prosecutors are found in just two states: Mississippi and Virginia.

Since the report looks exclusively at elected prosecutors, not all states are represented equally.

In many instances, prosecutors face election in “down-ballot” races that take place in off-year elections when voter turnout is at its lowest.

While we’re glad the numbers have been documented, we’re not surprised by the findings. Kentucky had the most elected prosecutors, 161, while three states had none.

Justice for All*? builds on the Reflective Democracy Campaign’s groundbreaking research released in October 2014 revealing the race and gender of 42,000 elected office holders in the USA, from the President down to the county level (available at http://WhoLeads.Us).

Latinos are 17% of the population, and only 1.7% of elected prosecutors.

Paltrow cited the recent case of Purvi Patel, an Indiana woman who was sentenced to 20 years after being convicted of feticide for attempting to terminate a pregnancy using abortion drugs she purchased online.