Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Iowa officials are searching for ways to reduce the flow of minority youth — particularly African-Americans — into juvenile detention centers and prisons.
Recent statistics from the Iowa Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning (CJJP) show areas of concerns, said analysts who presented the data to a group studying the issue. As youth advance through the juvenile justice system, minorities receive fewer alternatives to help them avoid detention than whites, among other problems, said Kile Beisner, a CJJP research analyst.
“We don’t have a lot of division between genders, but we do have a lot of division across racial lines,” she said.
The Youth Race and Detention Task Force created by Gov. Chet Culver last year is studying the racial disparities in the juvenile justice system and will make recommendations to reduce them. The 40-member group includes judges, juvenile court officers, child advocates and others. The task force met with officials from the Des Moines School district, Iowa Department of Corrections and Iowa Workforce Development last Thursday at Iowa Workforce Development in Des Moines.
The data, which compared whites with all minorities grouped together, didn’t surprise the meeting attendees.
“If you just pulled out African-Americans and Native Americans, the numbers would be even worse,” said task force member Brad Richardson, coordinator of Iowa’s DMC Resource Center, research scientist and adjunct professor at the University of Iowa.
Iowa has 11 secure juvenile detention facilities. White females account for 89 percent of the juvenile population between the ages of 10 and 17 years-old, but 67 percent of detentions; minority females account for 11 percent of the population, but 33 percent of detentions; white males account for 89 percent of the population, but 61 percent of detentions and minority males account for 11 percent of the population, but 39 percent of detentions.
Iowa tops the nation for imprisoning blacks at a rate that is 13.6 times the rate of whites, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project.
The task force, which met last Thursday, will meet again in May.
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