Lafayette Lawyer proposes 'racial-tracking' rule for court system

Lafayette Lawyer proposes 'racial-tracking' rule for court system

Lafayette lawyer is looking to solve the racial disparities that can happen in the court system.

Kirk freeman is proposing that local court's create a racial-tracking metric.

News 18's micah upshaw tells us how it'll work.

K: if the chief justice of indiana acknowledges that there's a problem, there is a problem.

M: indiana supreme court chief justice loretta rush released this statement touching on the issues of racism within the justice system.

Part of it includes a call to actions for courts across the state.

Lawyer kirk freeman of kirk freeman law in lafayette says to fix the problem, we have to start by diagnosing it.

K: different categories of citizens are being treated differently, that's the problem.

How do we fix the problem?

Well we fix the problem by identifying it.

M: kirk has proposed a local rule.

The rule would require courts to track the ethnicity of individuals that find themselves in the criminal justice system.

K: i propose that we start keeping track of numbers throughout the timeline of the criminal case then you can point along the timeline where the racial disparity is and more importantly what you can do to fix it.

M: ethnicity is recorded as soon as a person is booked in jail.

However, freeman says its difficult to find that racial information after a case has gone through trial.

When he's tried to research similar cases and the person's ethnicity, he's often told "we don't have that information" k: i want something concrete, rather than this vague 'we don't know anything about it' and allow the prosecution to hide in the midst of not knowing.

M: he says having a way to track racial information could be a way to ensure those who commit crimes aren't being charged differently based on their race.

K: it's not right that certain.

M: in tippecanoe county, micah upshaw, news 18.

Next week, we'll hear from county prosecutor pat harrington.

He will share his thoughts on the proposed rule.