Good policy should account for how decisions will play out on the ground and affect people’s lives. One tool lawmakers can use that aims to shed light on these impacts before legislation is passed is the racial impact statement. Like environmental or fiscal impact statements, racial impact statements are predictive tools used in criminal justice policymaking to determine whether pending bills, if enacted, are likely to create or exacerbate disparate outcomes among people of different races or ethnicities.

Racial impact statements can build a critical check for systemic racism into the justice policymaking process and help chart a more intentional and equitable course. This virtual event will feature experts from Urban, The Sentencing Project, and the National Juvenile Justice Network, as well as Maryland State Delegate Jazz Lewis and Wayne Ford, the former Iowa state representative who led passage of the nation’s first racial impact statement legislation. Together they will explore how states can effectively use racial impact statements to achieve reform.

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