Shima Baradaran · January 2013
81 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 157 (2013)
Many scholars and political leaders denounce racism as the cause of dis- proportionate incarceration of black Americans. All players in this system have been blamed, including the legislators who enact laws that disproportion- ately harm blacks, police who unevenly arrest blacks, prosecutors who over- charge blacks, and judges who fail to release and oversentence black Americans. Some scholars have blamed the police and judges who make ar- rest and release decisions based on predictions of whether defendants will commit future crimes, claiming that prediction leads to minorities being treated unfairly. Others complain that racism results from misused discretion. This Article explores where racial bias enters the criminal justice system through an empirical analysis that considers the impact of discretion and prediction.
With a close look at the numbers and consideration of factors ignored by others, this Article confirms some conventional wisdom but also makes sev- eral surprising findings. This Article confirms what many commentators have suspected—that police arrest black defendants more often for drug crimes than white defendants. It also finds, contrary to popular belief, that there is little evidence to support the belief that drugs are linked to violent crime. Also, judges actually detain white defendants more than similarly-situated black defendants for all types of crimes. The important and surprising find- ings in this Article challenge long-held conventions of race and help mitigate racial disparity in criminal justice.
