Transportation
Mapping California's Racial Bias in Sentencing Traffic Violations
A new report and interactive map show that poor and minority offenders bear the brunt of fines and sentences for minor offenses in the state.
Last year, a scathing Department of Justice report revealed how the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, made money from the fines and fees they leveed disproportionately against the city’s poor, black residents. They “leeched off the black community as shamelessly as would mafia bosses,” Conor Friedersdorf wrote in The Atlantic.
But it soon became clear that Ferguson wasn’t unique.