Race in the Criminal Justice System

Race in the criminal justice system is a big topic. Thousands of books and articles touch on it. This section of the guide just offers a SMALL selection.

Shima Baradaran, Race, Prediction, and Discretion, 81 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 157 (2013) [HeinOnline]

I. Bennett Capers, Rethinking the Fourth Amendment: Race, Citizenship, and the Equality Principle, 46 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 1 (2011) [journal] [HeinOnline]

Criminal Justice Policy Program, Harvard Law School, Racial Disparities in the Massachusetts Criminal System (2020), [full report (PDF)], [web page with  highlights]

Robert D. Crutchfield et al., Racial and Ethnic Disparity and Criminal Justice: How Much is Too Much, 100 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 903 (2010), [HeinOnline]

Brooks Holland, Race and Ambivalent Criminal Procedure Remedies, 47 Gonz. L. Rev. 341 (2012) [HeinOnline]

Michael J. Klarman, The Racial Origins of Modern Criminal Procedure, 99 Mich. L. Rev. 48 (2000) [journal] [HeinOnline]

Jesse J Norris, State Efforts to Reduce Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice: Empirical Analysis and Recommendations for Action, 47 Gonz. L. Rev. 493 (2011-12) [HeinOnline]

Sentencing Project, Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers (2d ed. 2008)

Amber Hall, Student Note, Using Legal Ethics to Improve Implicit Bias in Prosecutorial Discretion, 42 J. Legal Prof. 111 (2017) [HeinOnline]

Andrea D. Lyon, Race Bias and the Importance of Consciousness for Criminal Defense Attorneys, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 755 (2012) [journal] [HeinOnline]

Robert J. Smith & Justin D. Levinson, The Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 795 (2012) [journal] [HeinOnline]

Theodore Eisenberg et al., Actual Versus Perceived Performance of Judges, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 695 (2012) [journal] [HeinOnline]

Vida B. Johnson, Arresting Batson: How Striking Jurors Based on Arrest Records Violates Batson, 34 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 387 (2016) [HeinOnline]

Aneeta Rattan, Cynthia S. Levine, Carol S. Dweck & Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Race and the Fragility of the Legal Distinction Between Juveniles and Adults, 7 PLoS One e36680 (2012). "In the present study, simply bringing to mind a Black (vs. White) juvenile offender led participants to view juveniles in general as significantly more similar to adults."

Carlos Berdejo, Criminalizing Race: Racial Disparities in Plea-Bargaining,  59 B.C. L. Rev. 1187 (2018), [HeinOnline]

Anthony A. Braga et al., Race, Place, and Effective Policing, 45 Ann. Rev. Socio. 535 (2019) [Annual Reviews]

Mark R. Chaires, Stereotypes and Deadly Force Decision Making (SUNY Albany Ph.D. dissertation, 2015) [UAlbany library]. Study using computer simulations.

Alex Chohlas-Wood, Marissa Gerchick, Sharad Goel, Aziz Z. Huq, Amy Shoemaker, Ravi Shroff & Keniel Yao, Identifying and Measuring Excessive and Discriminatory Policing, 89 U. Chi. L. Rev. 441 (2022) [journal site] [alternate site]. Empirical studies in Chicago, Nashville, New York City, and Philadelphia.

Mary D. Fan, Panopticism for Police: Structural Reform Bargaining and Police Regulation by Data-Driven Surveillance, 87 Wash. L. Rev. 93 (2012) [journal] [HeinOnline]

Lois James, The Influence of Suspect Race and Ethnicity on Decisions to Shoot in a Deadly Force Judgment and Decision-Making Simulator (Washington State University dissertation, 2011) [WSU library]. Study using computer simulations.

Vesla M. Weaver et al., The Great Decoupling: The Disconnection Between Criminal Offending and Experience of Arrest Across Two Cohorts, RSF, Feb. 2019, at 89. From the abstract:

Our study explores the arrest experiences of two generational cohorts—those entering adulthood on either side of a large shift in American policing. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 and 1997), we find a stark increase in arrest odds among the later generation at every level of offending, suggesting a decoupling between contact with the justice system and criminal conduct. Furthermore, this decoupling became racially inflected. Blacks had a much higher probability of arrest at the start of the twenty-first century than both blacks of the generation prior and whites of the same generation. The criminal justice system, we argue, slipped from one in which arrest was low and strongly linked to offending to one where a substantial share of Americans experienced arrest without committing a crime.

Jessica Erickson, Comment, Racial Impact Statements: Considering the Consequences of Racial Disproportionalities in the Criminal Justice System, 89 Wash. L. Rev. 1425 (2014) [journal] [HeinOnline]