Results of many studies show that there is disparity in jail time for the same or similar convicted offenses between people of color and white population in the United states. The disparity continues to widen everyday as more discriminatory sentences are handed down to people of color and other minority groups in the United States. Despite the overwhelming knowledge and awareness of the jail time discriminatory statistics among the legal and policy makers communities, the disparity seems to have persisted and endured. While recent efforts to reduce the time spent in jail by non-violent drug offenses is commendable, the disparity in jail time for any offense between minority communities and white population must be harmonized for the sake of justice and transparency. It is possible that sentencing judges might not have the data of similar/exact jail time meted to previous offenders at the time of sentencing of new offenders, efforts must be made to provide the data to judges before sentencing.  In this regard, it will be prudent to develop multiple databases and/or software to compare offenses (criminal or civil) across jail time for people in prison before sentencing convicted offenders with similar offenses. In this way, the sentencing judge would not deviate significantly from the previous punishment for similar or the same offense.

Harmonization of Jail Time during Sentencing

The current criminal justice database could be optimized and modernized to conduct jail time harmonization search and compare jail time across convicted offenses in both state and federal database. The federal and state criminal justice databases must be connected so that all offenses and jail times are linked. If a convicted person is serving jail time for non-violent drug offense, the search would reveal all persons serving jail time for non-violent drug offenses in the federal and all state prisons. Armed with this information, the sentencing judge would look at the search results (maximum jail time, minimum jail time, or average jail time) and then study the peculiar differences and circumstances associated with each case and offense before handing down sentencing time. On the alternative and to save time, offenses and associated circumstances could be fed into the system and automatic sentencing time would be handed down by the electronic system based on comparative analysis conducted by the computer. It is possible that a particular criminal offense could be carried out by offenders using different methods to achieve definitive criminal offenses, the variation in sentencing time, if required, must be realistic and not punitive for a particular group or groups. Such consideration must not depart far from the ideal time required for the definitive offense. For example, a non-violent drug offense was committed by selling drug to a person who uses it for recreational purposes and the user denies due to drug overdose, while another non-violent drug offense was committed by selling drug to a person who carried out robbery at local bank and stole cash from the bank. Comparing these two situations, the offense for the seller of the drug is the same, but the scenario might be viewed differently by two sentencing judges. The harmonized jail time search engine would ensure that both judges do not depart significantly from the jail time even though there might be slight difference in jail time based on the different offense methodology.

Harmonization of Jail Time for Current Prisoners

The author also recommends application of harmonized jail time search/software to rectify the injustices in jail time of those currently in prison. The system must analyze all offenses and prison times of all offenses and filter similar offenses and jail times. Based on the analysis, all persons serving discriminatory high jail time must be rectified to align with those with the same offense serving low jail time. Once the harmonization is complete, there is the potential that many people would have completed their jail time and might be qualified to be integrated into the society. The onus would then be on various governments to ensure that public safety precautionary mechanisms are put in place to avoid recurrent offense and potential harm to the public before the final release of the offenders.