Us department of justice falls short in diversity hiring efforts

The House Judiciary Committee has opened a probe into allegations that the Department of Justice has fallen short in its diversity hiring efforts in many of its key divisions. One of the key charges in the investigation is that the Justice Department has failed to hire a single black attorney since 2003 in the key criminal section of the departments civil rights division.

In addition, a private review of dozens of pages of internal Justice Department documents found that of the 50 lawyers in the criminal section, only two are Black. What’s more shocking than the low number of Black attorneys in the criminal section now is that it’s the same number of Black attorneys the section had in 1978— despite the fact that the size of the staff has more than doubled.

Further investigation into department's records across several divisions show that the department hired few or no African-Americans or Hispanics either.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan, House Judiciary Department Chairman), who initiated the investigation, called the lack of diversity in the civil rights division of the justice department “totally unacceptable.”

And he’s right. One of the biggest problems that acts to impede the progress of workplace diversity in the United States is the lack of buy-in from individuals at the head of organizations. In the case of the Justice Department, it seems that despite the fact that the Attorney General himself is a minority, either he or his subordinates that manage the hiring process in the Justice Department do not seem to see the necessity of hiring minority attorneys.

Being a US attorney is a very high profile job where a person may appear on television, in the newspapers, and on the Internet repeatedly. Why the Justice Department chooses to put forth a public face that is void of diversity is beyond me.

The only reason that I can think of as to why the Justice Department is failing in its diversity efforts in one that the department itself may not have very much control over. It may just be that big private law firms are aggressively recruiting diversity candidates and are much more competitive than the Justice Department in their pursuit of qualified minority attorneys.

In terms of pay, a Justice Department lawyer can expect to earn much less than a first year associate at a big private law firm (around $160,000 in New York). Because the Department of Justice is budget constrained, it likely cannot (or won’t) tender offers to assistant district attorneys that they are likely to accept.

Complicating the situation is the fact that the need for Justice Department lawyers lies in large judicial districts like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago— cities where it is almost prohibitively expensive to live.

The Department of Justice can basically do two things to increase diversity within its ranks: pay assistant district attorneys more money and improve their diversity recruiting efforts. The Justice Department needs to do a better job of inspiring young diversity attorneys to become assistant district attorneys—despite the lower pay.

As usual, there is no short-term solution to this problem. While it is sad that the Justice Department has fared poorly in its diversity recruiting efforts, we can’t expect to see an overnight turnaround. The fact that everyone now knows about the department of Justice’s diversity woes will serve as the impetus to fire up their diversity recruiting machine, but it will be a while before tangible results are seen.