The Orange County Corrections' website now posts inmate data showing how many Hispanics are being held at the jail.
- Civil rights advocate said knowing jail population is important
- Orange County Corrections breaks down jail population
Hispanics were counted under the white race classification, but Phillip Arroyo, a civil rights advocate and law student, said that was an injustice to the Hispanic population.
"Well, as a law student, I'm a big data guy," Arroyo said. "I started to look into the Department of Corrections' statistics, and I noticed something odd. As a Puerto Rican myself, I noticed that Hispanics were being counted as white."
Hispanics are considered part of an ethnic group, not a race. Orange County Corrections, following federal law, records Hispanics as white. The other options are black, Asian or American Indian.
Arroyo said that civil rights advocates need the data in order to know who needs help.
As of Dec. 8, Hispanics made up about 22 percent of the Orange County Jail population. Orange County Corrections officials said ethnic and race data was always collected, but it wasn't made available online until a recent change.