To state the obvious: The justice system must remain color blind, if someone commits a crime, they do the time.

(CNN) — Last month, President Obama announced a new initiative, My Brother’s Keeper, which aims to improve the life chances of young black men. It’s an important effort designed to help one of American society’s most vulnerable populations. Young black men are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, experience unemployment and come into contact with the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Experts disagree about the root causes of these problems, but few doubt that something needs to be done.

One of the interventions Obama highlighted is called Becoming a Man, a Chicago-based program that aims to reduce teenagers’ violent behavior by teaching them “social-cognitive skills,” such as self-control, conflict resolution and the ability to more accurately read the emotions and intentions of others. […]

Black teenagers are not just more likely to be arrested, they also are more likely to be locked up, even when convicted of the same crimes as others. Racial disparities are especially pronounced when it comes to punishment for relatively minor offenses, such as drug possession. For example, black juveniles are nearly twice as likelyas their white peers to be locked up for a drug offense. As a result of mandatory sentencing laws, courts don’t have much discretion when it comes to sentencing people convicted of serious violent crimes, which makes sentencing less racially biased in these instances.

Incarcerating a young black man seriously impedes his chances of making a successful life. Spending time in jail or prison disrupts schooling, which makes it hard to get a decent job. The unemployment that often follows release from incarceration has rippling effects, contributing to high rates of single parenthood (unemployed men are less likely to marry) and family instability in the black community (divorce rates are higher in families with unemployed fathers), increasing the likelihood that one generation’s difficulties will be passed on to the next.

It’s a vicious cycle that needs to be broken. One way of breaking it is to stop locking people up who have broken the law but who don’t present a genuine danger to the community.

HT: Brenda