The National Academies Press | Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice

Unequal treatment within the criminal justice system in the U.S. is the result of systemic racism and the policies and practices that reinforce it.

Substantial, measurable racial disparities exist across the multiple stages of the criminal justice system, including arrests, pre-trial detention, sentencing and incarceration, application of the death penalty, and probation and parole. Assembling the pieces and viewing them as a whole reveals a criminal justice system that operates very differently based on a person’s race or ethnicity. Criminal justice reforms that reduce the scale of police stops and prison admissions, the duration of long sentences, and the duration and intensity of community supervision are likely to produce large reductions in criminal justice involvement in minority communities.

To address this problem, proper context and a nuanced approach are needed. The systems that disadvantage racial minorities in the U.S., both historic and those still in place, can lead to increased contact with the criminal justice system and increased crime. This creates a feedback loop that drives racial inequality in the criminal justice system and society.

Criminal justice reform can be strengthened by reducing the socioeconomic disadvantages that increase the risks of criminal justice contact among the residents of low-income communities, who are disproportionately Black, Latino, or Native American.

Measuring Racial Inequality

The way racial inequalities in the criminal justice system are measured matters. There is a lack of consistent, reliable data, as well as data transparency and accountability. There is a need for scientific infrastructure, research funding, and guidance on data collection and analysis for reform.

While an accurate picture of racial inequality on a national scale is difficult to create, the data available point toward trends that Black, Latino, and Native American individuals are overrepresented the criminal justice system and given more severe punishments compared to White individuals.

KEY TRENDS

Early stages of the justice system, such as police stops, jails, misdemeanor courts, and fines and fees, disproportionately target Black, Latino, and Native Americans relative to Whites, meaning minority populations have more frequent contact with the criminal justice system.

More frequent contacts between police and Black, Latino, and Native Americans may lead to more of these individuals being brought into the criminal justice system, thus increasing racial disparities at this entry point.

Reducing the number of people in prison should be explored as one possible strategy for reducing racial inequality, as evidence has shown some reductions in racial disparities as a result of substantial decreases in overall incarceration rates from 2008-2020.

The criminal justice system produces racial inequality at each decision point and is cumulative over time, meaning a focus on disparities or trends at any one point in the system is too narrow. To understand the system’s impact on racial inequality, a more comprehensive understanding of contact across these multiple points must be considered.

Policy Recommendations for Reducing Racial Inequality

Racial inequality in the criminal justice system is a structural problem, and harms from all levels are cumulative. However, solutions can also build on one another. From federal agencies to law enforcement agencies, to local community organizations, policies and practices from various levels and stakeholders can work in conjunction to reduce these inequalities.

Criminal Justice Reforms Non-Criminal Justice Reforms

Criminal Justice Reforms

A wide variety of measures—including judicial bans on unconstitutional policing and incarceration, sentencing reform for drug offenses and defelonization, bail reform, and reductions in the intensity and duration of community corrections supervision—have reduced the overall level of criminal justice contact, incarceration, and community supervision. These measures have had large effects on reducing overall racial disparities, with little evidence across specific cases of an adverse effect on crime.

Local governments and law enforcement agencies have the ability and responsibility to explore ways to reduce inequalities in the criminal justice system.

Agencies tasked with improving equity in justice could explore the following policy changes:

Limit jail detention to only those charged with serious crimes who pose a serious and immediate risk of harm or flight.
Reevaluate which crimes warrant long sentences and reevaluate the cases of those that are currently serving long sentences.
Eliminate cash bail and replace it with an actuarial system where detention depends on risk of pretrial misconduct.
Reduce the incarceration of individuals under community supervision, especially for technical violations.
Explore further drug reform policies, including the defelonization of certain drug offenses.
Eliminate the death penalty.

Federal and state governments and agencies can shape the national narrative by leveraging its influence on reform. The following strategies should be considered:

States, localities, and the federal government should explore ways to reduce police stops and searches, jail detention, prison admissions, and long sentences that would further reduce racial disparities.
Enable the development of evidence-based solutions by enhancing grant-making structures, data systems, and research.
Promote model jurisdictions and programs that have effectively reduced racial and ethnic disparities.
Explore the expansion of community-driven pilot programs that are fielded in combination with strong evaluation strategies.
Coordinate with private foundations that provide incentives, explore promising new practices, seed innovation, and add value to efforts to accelerate systemic reform.
Support research examining and evaluating tribal models of justice and other community-based programs.

Non-Criminal Justice Reforms

Although criminal justice policy reforms are necessary to reduce racial inequality, they alone cannot solve these historically rooted, complex inequalities. Federal, state, and local governments, as well as community organizations, and private enterprises can play a role in improving the well-being of communities and lessening the structural social disadvantages by pairing criminal justice reforms with non-criminal justice policy approaches.

Localities can partner with non-government organizations to improve resident quality of life in neighborhoods and make meaningful changes that can reduce crime and reduce racial inequalities.
Examples:

Match grants to community organizations for neighborhood improvement projects or services
Fund Business Improvement Districts that work to enhance public safety and goods
Improve the built environment through greening and lead remediation programs

States and localities can explore evidence-based strategies to promote labor market success among people who are re-entering society.
Examples:

Placement into high quality jobs with potential for upward mobility through educational and entrepreneurship programs

Pursuing evidence-informed health and education strategies can mitigate the relationship between social and economic problems and racial disparities in crime.
Examples:

Universal policy approaches, such as Medicaid expansion, and targeted approaches, such as community-based health services can improve the safety well-being of disadvantaged communities.
High quality early childhood education programs have been shown to reduce criminal involvement and result in cost savings in the long term.

Guiding Principles for Moving Forward

These guiding principles may help inform decision makers as they consider strategies and policy levers for implementing public policy approaches to reducing racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.

Criminal justice policies and reform need to be informed by an acknowledgement of the harms perpetrated by the system against specific racial and ethnic groups. Reforms that involve reconciliation can help repair relationships between criminal justice agencies and impacted communities that have been marked by historical tensions, grievances, and misconceptions.

Any effort to reduce racial inequalities in the justice system needs to include mechanisms for participation and accountability and transparent data and evaluation methods. Above all, these efforts need to be accountable to the communities they serve.

Communities that are disproportionately harmed by racial inequality in the criminal justice system should be partners in knowledge generation and implementation of policy solutions, along with researchers, practitioners, and other key stakeholders. Communities themselves have multifaceted needs, diverse perspectives, and unique contexts; the fact that community voices are heterogeneous across contexts calls for adequate survey tools and other measures of community representation in decision-making.

Criminal justice decision makers must understand the heterogeneity of contexts across jurisdictions and communities and take this into account when considering public policy solutions that have been shown to work in other contexts.