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From page 156... ... Racial Differences in Police Contacts Racial differences in police-initiated contacts are associated with the pattern of stops, for which police are constitutionally required to have a "reasonable suspicion" that the person stopped has been or is involved in the commission of a crime. Most commonly reported by the public are motor vehicle stops for speeding, but police stops also arise in the context of stop-question-and-frisk policies in some departments, pretextual traffic stops in others, and in general officers' practice of justifying stops by having a "reasonable suspicion" that a crime has been or is about to occur. Read the entire page →
From page 157... ... Research from the field of social psychology has explored the role of stereotype threat with respect to racial differences in police encounters.2 This literature builds on a body of psychological research that has docu mented evidence of a cultural stereotype of Black criminality, which has been shown to have a biased effect on how individuals process informa tion and form judgments, even when there is no conscious bias apparent (see, e.g., Eberhardt et al., 2004; Devine, 1989) Read the entire page →
From page 158... ... Due to high rates of residential segregation by race and income, these nested social contexts are important for understanding how policing contributes to racial inequality in the criminal justice system. Social context has been found to influence the likelihood of police contact and racial differences in police contacts. Read the entire page →
From page 159... ... Neighborhood violence was found to be the key driver of racial disparities in the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk practice (Neil, 2021) Read the entire page →
From page 160... ... First, context influences officers' cognition, such as their perceptions of people encountered in certain places, which in turn affects their behavior. In this way, racial differences in exposure to relevant contexts could yield racial disparities. Read the entire page →
From page 161... ... Stops and Arrests Beyond increased police presence in neighborhoods, entry into the formal criminal justice system most often comes through police in the form of an arrest or citation. The changes in law enforcement policies and practices noted above have affected the frequency, quality, and consequences of police encounters between the police and minority members of the public, especially minority young adults who live in settings most impacted by histories of racial and economic exclusion and exploitation. Read the entire page →
From page 162... ... Scholars have analyzed and assessed the dynamics through which, and impact of the manner in which, criminal justice system involvement detracts from an individual's civic engagement (see, e.g., Brayne, 2014; Justice and Meares, 2014; Lerman and Weaver, 2014a,b; Weaver and Lerman, 2010) Read the entire page →
From page 163... ... They reported that Black people accounted for 58 percent of federal crack cocaine arrests in Los Angeles but 83 percent of federal crack cocaine charges, whereas White people accounted for three percent of arrests and were never federally prosecuted for crack related offenses over a two-year period. In contrast to these results, an experimental vignette study by Robertson and colleagues (2019) Read the entire page →
From page 164... ... . Pretrial detention, even for a relatively small number of days, may also have negative implications for future involvement with the criminal justice system and lead to more punitive treatment in juvenile settings (Zane et al., 2021) Read the entire page →
From page 165... ... For example, Black defendants are more likely than others to have u naffordable bail amounts or be denied bail, and therefore are more likely to be detained. Since Black people are more likely than White people to enter the system from conditions of concentrated disadvantage (see Chapter 3) Read the entire page →
From page 166... ... Sentencing and Incarceration Shifts in sentencing and incarceration policies over the last 50 years have also affected racial inequality, both by increasing the incarceration of minority populations and by worsening its long-term effects. American sentencing policies, practices, and patterns have changed dramatically during the past 40 years, with three distinct discernable phases. Read the entire page →
From page 167... ... Indeed, as noted in the conceptual discussion of racial inequality above, the National Research Council's (1983) review of sentencing research found that offense seriousness and prior record were key determinants of sentences, and the overrepresentation of Black men and women in prison was mostly explained by factors other than discrimination (see also Kleck, 1981; Hagan, 1974) Read the entire page →
From page 168... ... They find that much of the racial disparity in sentencing outcomes can be explained by racial disparities in the prosecutor's decision to charge a mandatory minimum offense. These results are consistent with other research showing that race differences at pre-sentencing points of discretion -- at pretrial detention (Wooldredge et al., 2015; Sutton, 2013) Read the entire page →
From page 169... ... review seven years of federal sentencing data and find racial disparities in life without parole sentences, and the authors find these differences to be attributable to mechanisms built into the sentencing system (e.g., mode of conviction, mandatory minimums, and guideline departures) Read the entire page →
From page 170... ... The manual was intended to create uniformity among offenders sentenced for the same offense type and with the same criminal history. However, operating in tandem with statutory manda tory minimum sentences, federal sentencing guidelines have accompanied an increase in racial disparity (Hofer, 2019; Rehavi and Starr, 2014; McDonald and Carlson, 1993) Read the entire page →
From page 171... ... If a defendant has prior offenses, the offenses are each given a numerical value, and these values are added together to determine the defendant's criminal history score, which places the defendant within an established criminal history category (United States Sentencing Commission, 2019, pp. Read the entire page →
From page 172... ... United States, 1996) , although research regularly finds that Black defendants receive, on average, slightly longer sentences than White people even when the offense characteristics and criminal history are controlled (Yang, 2015; Rehavi and Starr, 2014; Ulmer et al., 2011) Read the entire page →
From page 173... ... prison population were held in solitary confinement on any given day, and about 20 percent of the prison population were in soli tary confinement at some point during a prison stay. Although the severity of prison conditions increased on average during the period of the prison boom from 1972 to 2008, there has been substan tial variation in conditions across jurisdictions and prison facilities. Read the entire page →
From page 174... ... . Beyond the general pattern of prison conditions, researchers have consistently identified three key areas of racial inequality in which the experience of minority prisoners differs from the experience of White prisoners. Read the entire page →
From page 175... ... . Similar racial disparities have been reported in analyses of state prisoners in Florida (Cochran et al., 2018) Read the entire page →
From page 176... ... . The relatively high rate of prison homicide is related to the age, race, and sex distribution of the prison population, but the absence of firearms in prison also protects against the risk of homicide mortality. Read the entire page →
From page 177... ... People with criminal records and histories of incarceration experience high rates of unemployment and low earnings, both before and after incarceration (Kling, 2006; Western et al., 2001) Read the entire page →
From page 178... ... also finds that the stigma of a criminal record in the labor market is larger for Black jobseekers than for White ones. Parental Incarceration As incarceration rates increased, more families and children had d irect experience with the imprisonment of a parent (see NRC, 2014, Figure 9-1) Read the entire page →
From page 179... ... . The significant racial disparities in adult incarceration therefore translate into earlier introduction of Black, Native, and Latino children to the criminal system; see discussion above about the harmful effects of early exposure to the criminal justice system on child development. Read the entire page →

From page 156...

... Racial Differences in Police Contacts Racial differences in police-initiated contacts are associated with the pattern of stops, for which police are constitutionally required to have a "reasonable suspicion" that the person stopped has been or is involved in the commission of a crime. Most commonly reported by the public are motor vehicle stops for speeding, but police stops also arise in the context of stop-question-and-frisk policies in some departments, pretextual traffic stops in others, and in general officers' practice of justifying stops by having a "reasonable suspicion" that a crime has been or is about to occur.