Racial Disproportionality in U.S. State Prisons: Accounting for the Effects of Racial and Ethnic Differences in Criminal Involvement,Arrests, Sentencing,and Time Served

Objectives

An important indicator of discrimination in the criminal justice system is the degree to which race differences in arrest account for racial disproportionality in prisons (“accountability”). A recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study raised concerns by reporting low and declining estimates of accountability. Our improved measure accounts for unreported Hispanic arrestees. We measure accountability at intermediate stages, including commitments to prison and time served. We also use victim reports to extend accountability from arrest to differential involvement in violent crimes.

Methods

Our methods utilize information on self-reported racial identity of Hispanic prisoners to provide more accurate comparison with the race of arrestees. We also assess accountability for 42 individual states and 4 regions.

Results

Our national estimate of accountability is close to previous estimates and much higher than those in the NAS report. Accountability is high for the serious violent crimes of murder and rape, and low for drug trafficking, drug possession, weapons, and aggravated assault, which involve more discretion in arrest, labeling and charging.

Conclusions

Our more accurate accountability results contradict the NAS report of low and declining accountability. Regional accountability estimates show no consistently stronger or weaker region. We also show a corrected national estimate of the ratio of black-to-white incarceration-rates has dropped from 6.8 in 1990 to 4.7 in 2011, an important correction to concerns of increasing discrimination. Reports of offenders’ race by victims and arrestees’ race are found to be close, supporting use of arrest as an indicator of involvement in violent crimes.

     

Policing in the Hyde Park neighborhood, St. Louis: Racial bias, political pressure, and community policing

Policing in the inner-city neighborhood of Hyde Park is evaluated against a backdrop of racial polarization within the city of St. Louis and political pressures upon the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD). Data garnered from immersion into Hyde Park community life, participation in and observation of numerous police/community meetings, document analyses, a focus group session with rank-and-file police officers, interviews with a sergeant and the captain of the Police Fifth District, and numerous informal conversations with residents and police officers provide evidence of poor community/police relationships. The data also provide evidence—on the part of police—of racial bias, lack of and/or poor understanding of the underlying causes of criminal behavior, pervading adventure and excitement lures toward police work, and a less than adequate understanding of the community oriented problemsolving (COPS) policing initiative. An underlying theme of little or absent informed locus of control at various levels regarding policing practices links issues of poor police/community relationships and the influence of racial bias and political pressures.     

Incarceration, Health, and Racial Disparities in Health

This article addresses two basic questions. First, it examines whether incarceration has a lasting impact on health functioning. Second, because blacks are more likely than whites to be exposed to the negative effects of the penal system—including fractured social bonds, reduced labor market prospects, and high levels of infectious disease—it considers whether the penal system contributes to racial health disparities. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and both regression and propensity matching estimators, the article empirically demonstrates a significant relationship between incarceration and later health status. More specifically, incarceration exerts lasting effects on midlife health functioning. In addition, this analysis finds that, due primarily to disproportionate rates of incarceration, the penal system plays a role in perpetuating racial differences in midlife physical health functioning.     

Racial Inequality,Ethnic Inequality,and the System Involvement of At-Risk Youth: Implications for the Racial Invariance and Latino Paradox Theses

Drawing from the inequality and crime, racial invariance, and Latino paradox literatures, the effects of inequality on youth reoffending are examined. Specifically, hierarchical logistic regression models are estimated to determine: (1) whether racial and ethnic inequality have similar contextual effects on the continued delinquent behavior of at-risk youth and (2) whether these effects are specific to black or Latino/a youth residing in Maricopa County, Arizona (N = 13,138). Findings suggest that racial inequality increases reoffending while ethnic inequality decreases reoffending. Additionally, Latino/a youth are less likely to reoffend in areas characterized by high income and racial inequality. Structural theories of crime should continue to account for the importance of culture and the resilient responses employed by Latinos/as living in criminogenic environments.     

Racial variation in the proximal and distal femur: heritability and forensic utility.

The femur has been studied successfully by physical anthropologists for many years. Such traits as femoral head diameter and bicondylar width have been examined extensively and are of great value to forensic anthropologists and other skeletal biologists in sex identification. A number of studies over the past decade by the author and his former students have shown marked racial differences in the shape of the proximal femur and in at least one trait of the distal femur--intercondylar notch height. Anterior-posterior (AP) diameter of the proximal femur is much greater among Whites and Blacks than among East Asians and American Indians. Blacks have slightly greater intercondylar notch height than Whites. Other features, such as torsion, also differ between the major geographic racial populations. Current analysis suggests that the East Polynesians fall close to the American Indians and East Asians in the degree of flatness of the proximal femur. One study has tracked the degree of change in flatness during individual development, and finds little change within major populations from the youngest to the oldest individuals. Temporal changes within populations are likewise minimal. Two studies have examined sex differences within populations, which are also found to be very slight. Racial differences, on the other hand, are quite significant, and individuals of admixed ancestry fall intermediate between the two parental populations. Such suggestions of high heritability in the shape of the proximal and distal femur make these traits very useful in assessing ancestry in forensic contexts.     

The Politics of Racial Disparity Reform: Racial Inequality and Criminal Justice Policymaking in the States

Racial inequalities in criminal justice are pressing problems for policymakers. Prior literature suggests elected officials promulgate punitive, racially disparate criminal justice policies due to partisanship and racial fears, but scholarship has yet to explain how and why elected officials address racial problems in criminal processing. This article introduces the framework of racial disparity reform policymaking. A racial disparity reform is a policy that seeks to reduce distinctions in criminal justice institutions’ treatment of racial groups. Elected officials pursue these policies due to ideological beliefs in civil rights ideals and political interests in appearing to solve social problems. Using an original database of policy enactments, this article first presents the distribution and types of reform measures adopted by elected officials in all 50 states between 1998 and 2011. It then examines social and political explanations for when state legislatures and executives adopt racial disparity reforms. Policy enactment is predicted by worsening problems of racial disproportion in criminal processing, Democratic control of elected branches, and the absence of judicial efforts to improve racial fairness within a state’s criminal justice system. Similar dynamics encourage the development of different measures types within policies. Such ideological and problem-solving explanations for racial disparity reform show a potential for elected officials to forge more racially just criminal justice practices.     

Discrimination and Instructional Comprehension: Guided Discretion,Racial Bias,and the Death Penalty

This study links two previously unrelated lines of research: the lack of comprehension of capital penalty-phase jury instructions and discriminatory death sentencing. Jury-eligible subjects were randomly assigned to view one of four versions of a simulated capital penalty trial in which the race of defendant (Black or White) and the race of victim (Black or White) were varied orthogonally. Dependent measures included a sentencing verdict (life without the possibility of parole or the death penalty), ratings of penalty phase evidence, and a test of instructional comprehension. Results indicated that instructional comprehension was poor overall and that, although Black defendants were treated only slightly more punitively than White defendants in general, discriminatory effects were concentrated among participants whose comprehension was poorest. In addition, the use of penalty phase evidence differed as a function of race of defendant and whether the participant sentenced the defendant to life or death. The study suggest that racially biased and capricious death sentencing may be in part caused or exacerbated by the inability to comprehend penalty phase instructions.     

Search and Seizure, Racial Profiling, and Traffic Stops: A Disparate Impact Framework

In response to nationwide attention to the issue of racial profiling, numerous law enforcement agencies have reexamined their policies and collected data on the racial demographics of motorists stopped and searched by police. This article advocates a "disparate impact" framework for understanding the relationship between race and searches and seizures. Using data on the Washington State Patrol, analysis indicates that disparities in the proportions of racial minorities searched by the Patrol are likely not the result of intentional or purposeful discrimination. Additionally, factors such as age, sex, time of day, and the number of violations that motivated the stop affect the likelihood of a search.     

Race,Plea, and Charge Reduction: An Assessment of Racial Disparities in the Plea Process

With the growing recognition of the salience of prosecutorial discretion, attention to biases in the earlier phases of case processing is increasing. Still, few studies have considered the influence of defendant race and race/sex within the plea process. The present study uses a sample of felony cases to assess the influence of race and race/sex on the mode of disposition, similarities and differences in the factors that predict the likelihood of a plea across race, and potential racial disparities in the plea value received pertaining to a charge reduction. The findings suggest that blacks, and black males in particular, are less likely to plea, and are expected to receive a lower value for their plea. Also, the factors that predict the likelihood of a plea are substantively different across race. Conditioning effects of race and sex are found in the likelihood of a plea and probabilities of a charge reduction.     

Legitimating Racial Discrimination: Emotions, Not Beliefs, Best Predict Discrimination in a Meta-Analysis

Investigations of racial bias have emphasized stereotypes and other beliefs as central explanatory mechanisms and as legitimating discrimination. In recent theory and research, emotional prejudices have emerged as another, more direct predictor of discrimination. A new comprehensive meta-analysis of 57 racial attitude-discrimination studies finds a moderate relationship between overall attitudes and discrimination. Emotional prejudices are twices as closely related to racial discrimination as stereotypes and beliefs are. Moreover, emotional prejudices are closely related to both observed and self-reported discrimination, whereas stereotypes and beliefs are related only to self-reported discrimination. Implications for justifying discrimination are discussed.

Anything less is not feminism: Racial difference and the W.M.W.M.

Feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of colour, working class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women as well as white heterosexual, economically privileged women. Anything less is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandisement. White Middle-class Women's Movement. My special thanks to Susie Gibson for her insight and support on this project. Thanks to Akua Rugg for being there.     

Police Misconduct,Media Coverage,and Public Perceptions of Racial Profiling: An Experiment

The purpose of this study was: (1) to assess the impact of an incident of racial profiling on residents’ attitudes about profiling; and (2) to examine the effects of exposure to a video clip of deliberation about the incident on residents’ beliefs about the causes of profiling. All residents, White and minority, were less likely to believe that Chicago police officers engaged in profiling after the incident. These findings suggest that attitudes about the prevalence of racial profiling are susceptible to the manner in which the media construct incidents of police misconduct. Exposure to the video clip was not related to differences in residents’ beliefs about the causes of profiling, but was related to differences in perceptions of the dangerousness of traffic stops. The findings highlight the need for more research on how media constructions of police misconduct influence attitudes about profiling and impact community–police relations.     

Racial prejudice, perceived injustice, and the Black-White gap in punitive attitudes

Conflict theory and previous research suggest that the Black-White difference in support for harsh criminal punishments may be linked to anti-Black prejudice among Whites and perceived injustice among Blacks. Using survey data from the 2001 Race, Crime and Public Opinion Study, this article examines the sources of the racial gap in levels of punitiveness. Two main explanations are tested: perceived racial bias in the criminal justice system and racial prejudice. The results indicate that, together, racial prejudice and perceived racial bias explain the Black-White gap in punitive attitudes.     

Public Health, Racial Tensions, and Body Politic: Mass Ringworm Irradiation in Israel, 1949–1960

In this essay, we analyze the case study of mass ringworm irradiation conducted in Israel during its first years of existence and its consequences. We analyzed the case study of ringworm irradiation in the framework of racial construction of illness and its treatment, showing the elasticity of race and ethnicity as medical and social categories.