Recent data released by the New Orleans Police Department reveal a staggering number of black young people have been arrested on curfew violations, with black males arrested at a rate 16 times higher than that of the city’s white young people.
Nearly 93 percent of all young people arrested for curfew violations in New Orleans from 2009 until 2012 were black, The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.
In 2009, 98 percent of all youth detained for violating curfew laws were black. Of the 1,416 curfew arrests in New Orleans in 2009, just 26 of the young people arrested were white. In total, white males and females represented about 7 percent of all curfew arrests over the three-year timeframe.
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana Executive Director Dana Kaplan said the disproportionate percentages may be indicative of racial profiling by the Parish’s police department.
“[The information] is not inconsistent with what past data [have] been regarding curfew arrests,” she told The Times-Picayune. “And not inconsistent with some of the concerns of the Department of Justice around policing practices that were profiling communities of color.”
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