A significant body of literature has examined racial and ethnic inequalities in sentencing, focusing on how individual court actors make decisions, but fewer scholars have examined whether disparities are institutionalized through legal case factors. After finding racial and ethnic inequalities in pretrial detention, conviction, and incarceration based on 4 years of felony court data (N = 83,924) from Miami‐Dade County, we estimate nonlinear decomposition models to examine how much of the inequalities are explained by differences in criminal history, charging, and for conviction and incarceration, pretrial detention. Results suggest that inequality is greatest between White non‐Latinos and Black Latinos, followed by White non‐Latinos and Black non‐Latinos, ranging from 4 to more than 8 percentage points difference in the probability of pretrial detention, 7–13 points difference in conviction, 5–6 points in prison, and 4–10 points difference in jail. We find few differences between White non‐Latinos and White Latinos. Between half and three‐quarters of the inequality in pretrial detention, conviction, and prison sentences between White non‐Latino and Black people is explained through legal case factors. Our findings indicate that inequality is, in part, institutionalized through legal case factors, suggesting these factors are not “race neutral” but instead racialized and contribute to inequalities in court outcomes.
While prior research finds that pretrial detention has downstream consequences for racial inequalities in conviction and sentencing, it is often conceptualized as a discrete event within the criminal justice system. This study instead argues that pretrial detention operates as a racial-ethnic stratification process across time. We assess whether temporal and monetary dimensions of pretrial produce and reinforce racial-ethnic disparities in pretrial and subsequent case outcomes. Results indicate that time and money significantly stratify defendants by race and ethnicity, where bond amounts increase time detained, and that time detained in turn reinforces racial inequalities in conviction and incarceration. Indicative of cumulative understandings of inequality, our study shows how time and money in pretrial detention perpetuate inequalities in the criminal justice system.
While prior research has uncovered racial disparities in the administration of death sentences, little attention has been devoted to earlier stages in the capital punishment processes. To understand the locus of racial bias within death penalty institutions, this study examines the entry of homicide cases into Los Angeles County's criminal justice system during a 5-year period. This two-part analysis seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) Does victim/defendant race influence homicide clearance and death penalty charging decisions? and (2) if so, does the likelihood of clearance mediate the effect of victim race on death penalty charges? Logistic regressions indicate that cases involving Latino victims are less likely to be cleared. Moreover, cases with Black and Latino victims are less likely to be prosecuted with a death penalty-eligible charge. Racial disparities accumulate across these stages, with clearance patterns influencing subsequent death penalty charging decisions. Results underscore the cumulative nature of racial within criminal justice institutions. By linking police and prosecution outcomes, these findings also highlight the interrelationship between criminal justice agencies.
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