The Injustice of Justice

Once my son was charged as an adult he was immediately moved from the Seattle Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) to the adult jail at the Kent Regional Justice Center (RJC). Jailed as an adult he was only allowed 2 visits a week at 25 minutes each. But, anyone could go. I saw him once a week and had his therapist go during the day when I couldn't go. (I can't tell you how impressed I was with this guy when he volunteered to go and see him!)

Now I see C. twice a week for half an hour. But I'm the only one who can see him. (Guardians and children under 6 or 8 only.)

During the last 2½ months I've only seen 3 girls while visiting. Only one was white. I suspect she was in foster care because the woman visiting her was black, far too young to be her mom and they didn't seem to have that kind of relationship. I've only seen one white boy, about 13, talking to his lawyers. The lawyers are always loud. Even when they're in closed rooms you can hear them talking. There's no real privacy.

Parents are far and few between. If there's more than just me, I'm the only white parent in the room. The odd thing is that it's always either all Hispanics or all blacks. I talked to one lady last week for the first time. She said that her son told her that there are kids who have been held for 2 years and their parents have never come to see them.

All the lawyers are white and all the judges I've seen are white. The staff at the JDC are multiple races, but all were white at the RJC (but then I was only able to gone once a weeek).

Here are some statistics on race and the justice system in the area.

	People of Color	Whites	Source
General Population	31%	69%	The Gavel Gap
Federal Way Population	48.3%	51.7%	City-Data.com
WA State Judges	10%	90%	The Gavel Gap
Seattle Area Lawyers	14.4%	84.6%	2017 NALP Report on Diversity
Federal Way Police Department	No public data available
Federal Way Police Hired 2014-2017	24%	76%	Federal Way Mirror: articles about new officers being sworn in
WA State Prison Population	42.6%	57.4%	WA State Fact Card

King County does report on the race of incoming people (12/2017). However, its numbers are misleading. They count Hispanics as whites and with no numbers on Hispanic origin. My son asked me about this today even when we were visiting. So it makes it seem like the white population in jail is almost 60%, while reality is more like 45% white and 15% Hispanic. This discrepancy (or ability to hide numbers) if brought to you by the federal government in 2010 under the census where they made Hispanics not a race, but an origin.