Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice Science, Practice, and Policy (2023) / Chapter Skim
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8 Criminal Justice System Reforms to Reduce Racial Inequality
8 Criminal Justice System Reforms to Reduce Racial Inequality
Pages 265-310
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From page 265... ...
The committee views reforms to police, courts, and corrections as part of a larger transformation needed to significantly reduce racial inequality. Reducing arrests, incarceration, and other criminal justice contact in Black, Latino, and Native American communities will require reforms not only in criminal justice policy but also in other policy domains.
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From page 266... ...
It reviews research on alter native interventions within criminal justice settings aimed at reducing violence and criminal justice contact, particularly in Black, Latino, and Native American communities. It pays close attention to recent changes in policy that have led to declines in police stops and correctional supervision.
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From page 267... ...
One approach to reducing racial inequality has involved shrinking the scale of punitive impact of criminal legal processing -- say, the numbers of arrests or prison admissions -- in Black, Latino, and Native American communities. Shrinking the scale of punitive impact is different from many reforms that aim to reduce differ ential treatment, for example through anti-bias training.
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From page 268... ...
INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE AND POLICY Before examining each of the main stages of criminal processing, it is useful to consider the overall structure of interlocking agencies that comprise the criminal justice system and how they might operate together in a coordinated way to reduce racial inequality. Part I of this report provides evidence of large racial disparities in involvement with the criminal justice system at all stages.
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From page 269... ...
Although discrimination and disparate impact have been a focus for many reform efforts to reduce racial inequality, we also find strong evidence of reductions in absolute inequality by reducing the scale, duration, and intensity of criminal justice intervention. Proposals for reducing the overall extent of criminal justice contact are consistent with earlier research-based recommendations for reducing incarceration (NRC, 2014)
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From page 270... ...
When police departments share in the revenues from enforcement actions, the incentives are quite clear. There are many instances, however, where the structure of public financing provides less obvious incentives.
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From page 271... ...
The legislation halted the practice of revoking people under parole supervision back to prison for technical violations and diverted people convicted of many nonserious, nonviolent, nonsexual offenses to jail sentences or an alternative sanction to be served through some form of community corrections. This realignment led to a relatively quick reduction in the California prison population, caused by a sharp and immediate reduction in prison
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From page 272... ...
Shifting Policy Approaches to Drugs and Violent Crime The increase in incarceration rates in the four decades since the early 1970s largely resulted from changes in criminal justice policy (NRC, 2014; Raphael and Stoll, 2013)
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From page 273... ...
Particularly relevant to the current discussion of policy change, the wars on drugs and crime involved the adoption of new rules and routines across many domains, from policing to corrections. These changes in criminal justice policy had large effects on racial inequality in criminal justice involvement.
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From page 274... ...
also finds that racial inequality in length of sentencing between Black and White defendants decreased to less than six months from 2009 to 2018; among those convicted of drug offenses the Black/White gap decreased to zero over the same period. Light (2022)
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From page 275... ...
Nevertheless, the enduring pattern of long sentences for violent crimes has sustained racial disparities in incarceration. The two trends in policy suggest that alternative responses to violence that rely far less on long sentences would likely yield large reductions in racial disparity in incarceration.
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From page 276... ...
have been a key focus for researchers studying the connections between policing and racial inequality. In New York City, the New York Police Department (NYPD)
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From page 277... ...
In these cases, a large across-the-board reduction in stops, frisks, and arrests, in a context with large preexisting racial disparities, greatly re duced police contact among Black and Hispanic residents. Court oversight resulting from private litigation in New York coupled with independent 8 Daniels v.
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From page 278... ...
Pretextual Traffic Stops Related litigation has focused on pretextual traffic stops. A pretextual stop occurs when an officer identifies an objective violation of traffic law and lawfully stops the motorist, but the officer's actual intention is to investigate a hunch that, by itself, would not amount to a reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
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From page 279... ...
Although racial profiling was not central to the Washington State Supreme Court decisions, in contrast to the Floyd case in New York, and neither decision was directly intended to affect racial disparity, a large body of legal scholarship has examined racial profiling by police in traffic stops, particularly since the Whren decision. Did the 13-year ban on pre textual stops in Washington State reduce racial disparity in traffic stops?
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From page 280... ...
Under Section 14141 of the Vio lent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,10 the Attorney General is authorized to initiate structural reform litigation against police depart ments suspected of systemic misconduct that "deprives persons of the rights, privileges, or immunities secured and protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States" (Stuntz, 2006, p.
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From page 281... ...
For example, qualitative data from Pittsburgh show that police officers met the 1997–2002 consent decree with resistance and negativity (Davis et al., 2005)
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. Community-led efforts to reduce racial disparities in polic ing have focused on increasing social accountability measures through
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From page 283... ...
Judicial consent decrees are an example of efforts designed to reduce racial disparities with only evidence of temporary success. Body-worn Cameras One area of police operations that aims, in part, to improve police a ccountability involves the use of body-worn cameras.
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. Summary Major efforts to change the context of policing to reduce racial inequality have been mounted through measures to expand judicial, federal, and public oversight.
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Evaluations have found that trainees showed greater awareness of personal bias and a better understanding of how bias contributes to racial disparities. Still, there is no rigorous evidence base indicating that anti-bias training reduces racial disparity.
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From page 286... ...
Moreover, the authors report that they found insufficient evidence to conclude that racial and ethnic disparities in police enforcement actions were reduced because of the training. Recently, some jurisdictions have passed legislation focusing on eliminating explicit bias from police departments, largely through enhanced screening during the hiring stage and by making evidence of explicit bias a separate articulated element of background investigations.
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From page 287... ...
than studies of multifaceted efforts at cultural and organizational change aimed specifically at reducing racial in equality, and the committee views this as an important area for future study. Racial Inequality and Police Deterrence Tactics Police tactics to deter crime have important implications for racial inequality in the criminal justice system.
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From page 288... ...
As a police-based deterrence tactic, focused deterrence involves the direct communication of the consequences of continued criminal offending and the availability of social services to targeted subjects. Often this communication takes the form of a "call-in," a "forum," or a "notification," involving face-to-face meetings with police, service providers, and community representatives.
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From page 289... ...
, the contacts that indi vidual police officers and probation officers had with gang members, meetings with gang members in detention at juvenile facilities, and service partners who worked directly through outreach to the gangs. In this way, the police focused on a narrow problem (gang violence)
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have been shown to reduce serious violence but also carry the risk of discriminatory treatment and com munity mistrust. This finding points to the possibility of a tradeoff between reducing crime and reducing racial disparity.
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From page 291... ...
Although applications in many of these areas seek alternatives to the punitive approaches that characterized the era of high incarceration rates, programs are often small or lack detailed research that addresses our specific charge of reducing racial inequality. Pretrial Release Decisions and Risk Assessment Research indicates significant unwarranted racial disparities in pretrial release decisions (see Chapter 4)
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. Moreover, policy changes that inadvertently reduce racial disparities in pretrial detention have been found to reduce racial disparities in case outcomes (MacDonald and Raphael, 2020)
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From page 293... ...
However, at least two jurisdictions, in Minnesota and New York State, have used and modified risk tools with a view to reducing racial disparity and have provided detailed assessments of the effort. The Fourth Judicial District of Minnesota, Hennepin County, has developed a reiterative process of assessing scale validity and mitigating racialized differences in bail decisions.
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. To reduce racial disparity and create better predictive capacity, the Criminal Justice Agency updated its release assessment.
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From page 295... ...
The Oklahoma study found no racial differences in the effects of clearing court debt, but large racial disparities in the caseloads meant that the fewer warrants, debts in collection, and tax-refund garnishing enjoyed by the treatment group disproportionately benefited people of color (Pager et al., 2022)
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From page 296... ...
, which includes the Greater Boston Area, has also experimented with changing prosecutorial policy to reduce racial disparity. District Attorney Rachael Rollins, who was inaugurated in 2019, created an officewide presumption of non-prosecution for 15 nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, all of which were considered "crimes of poverty" and disproportionately charged against people of color.
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From page 297... ...
Lastly, one study has identified targeted racial disparities in judicial decision making when sentencing post-conviction. Scorecards that rated the extremity of disparity were calculated at the county level in New York State.
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From page 298... ...
Moreover, many juris dictions required that those sent to prison serve minimum percentages of their sentences regardless of conduct while incarcerated or efforts toward rehabilitation. The cumulative impact of these changes lengthened time served, especially for violent offenses; increased prison admission rates, particularly for lower-level drug offenses; increased racial disparities from
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From page 299... ...
However, some generalizations can be drawn from the past four decades that may guide reforms to reduce racial inequality. First, part of the growth in prison populations and in racial disparity from the early 1970s to the early 1990s is due to sentencing policies that impose terms of imprisonment and affect the rate of admissions to prisons.
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From page 300... ...
Moreover, these changes applied to virtually all controlled substances. Similar sentencing reforms have been adopted that also reduce prison admission for drug possession, small sales of drugs, and other high-disparity offenses.
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. Reducing Long Sentences As discussed earlier, the growth in prison populations and racial disparities was associated with increasing lengths of stay in prison, especially for violent crimes.
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Chapter 2 reports evidence of both racial disparity and racial bias in death penalty
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. Racial inequality thus figures as one of several arguments used against the death penalty, although experimental research also shows that pre senting evidence of racial disparity can increase support for the death penalty among White people (Peffley and Hurwitz, 2007)
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From page 304... ...
Parole super vision also operates with a high level of discretion, such that a parole board first decides on early release from prison and later on return custody in the event of a violation. Research shows large racial disparities in the rates of both community supervision and revocation of community supervision, with Black and Hispanic people at greater risk of re-incarceration (Bradner et al., 2020; Steen et al., 2013; Grattet et al., 2009)
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From page 305... ...
During the period of declining community supervision in the 2010s, crime declined by 7.4 percent (Bartos and Kubrin, 2018) , and "no measurable effect on violent crime" from the California reforms was found.
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From page 306... ...
Changes in drug sentencing, notably the elimination of mandatory prison sentences, have reduced incarceration for drug crimes, reducing absolute racial inequality between Black and White people. Reducing long sentences also promises to reduce racial disparity, with Second Look provisions offering one important mechanism for reviewing long sentences.
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From page 307... ...
In so doing, these measures also offer substantial promise for reducing racial inequality. Although racial inequality in criminal justice contact remains high, a wide range of criminal justice reforms have been adopted across the country that have reduced the disproportionate involvement in disadvantaged communities.
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From page 308... ...
CONCLUSION 8-3: The research and policy experience reviewed here has often involved piecemeal and uncoordinated reforms that have affected racial disparity at specific stages of criminal processing but have had less effect on racial inequality that emerges across stages and in community contexts of racial inequality. Reducing racial inequality will involve coordinated reforms across stages of the criminal justice system that will reduce the racial disadvantage that accumulates from police contact, to court processing and sentencing, to correctional supervision.
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From page 309... ...
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM REFORMS 309 RECOMMENDATION 8-2: Given evidence of how racial inequality in the criminal justice system partly results from structural inequali ties in society and the cumulative effect of criminal processing, states, localities, and the federal government should explore ways to reduce racial inequality through coordinated reforms that work across the stages of the criminal justice system and also address structural in equalities in society.
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