Haley Barbour pardons: Why were the forgiven so disproportionately white?

The sheer number of pardons handed out by outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour – over 200 – left many Mississippians in shock. What may not have been so surprising is that white prisoners were four times more likely than black ones to get the gubernatorial benefit of the doubt.

Out of a total of 222 acts of clemency given by Barbour during his tenure – 156 of which Attorney General Jim Hood has subsequently argued may be constitutionally invalid because of public notice violations – two-thirds benefited white prisoners. Meanwhile, two-thirds of the state's prison population is black.

On its face, the disparities immediately raise questions about whether the Mississippi pardon system is inherently racist. Some critics have called on the US Justice Department to investigate Barbour's pardons on the racial disparities alone, since such broad inequalities could point to a violation of the Constitution's equal protection clause.

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At the same time, the racial pattern of Barbour's pardons, justice experts say, offers insight into how parole lawyers, governors, even presidents, may view factors like rehabilitation and remorse differently depending on the race of the convict, where opinions may be based more on subtle cultural factors than outright prejudice.

A recent investigation by ProPublica showed that white convicts in the federal justice system were four times more likely to receive a presidential pardon than black convicts – a trend that has continued under President Obama, who is African American.

In most such cases, including Barbour's, chief executives have denied any racial bias, noting that the pardon boards and attorneys do not note a person's race on their written recommendations to the executive.

"A majority of the clemency cases were reviewed by the Parole Board before being sent to Governor Barbour," Barbour spokesperson Laura Hipp told Reuters, which conducted an analysis of Barbour's pardons. "Race was not a factor in his decision. In fact, it wasn't even listed on the Parole Board's application."

Black-white incarceration disparities are highest in the Northeast and Midwest and, overall, lowest in the South. Iowa, for example, has a black-to-white incarceration of 13-to-1 while Mississippi's ratio is 3-to-1.

Nevertheless, suspicions linger most especially in the South about the extent to which racial prejudice persists in the justice system and throughout society. In December, the US Justice Department declined to approve a new Voter ID law in South Carolina, for example, saying the state failed to prove how it would not disenfranchise blacks, a greater percentage of whom don't have state issued IDs.

Perhaps more than incarceration rate disparities, however, pardon rate inconsistencies suggest that biases may be less individual and more systemic. In Mississippi, for example, black prisoners, on the whole, have fewer resources than white prisoners, including access to personal lawyers, which may have led to fewer black prisoners requesting a pardon in the first place.

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