Effect of scaling back punishment on racial and ethnic disparities in criminal case outcomes

Abstract

In late 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47 that redefined a set of less serious felony drug and property offenses as misdemeanors. We examine how racial and ethnic disparities in criminal court dispositions in San Francisco change in the years before (2010-2014) and after (2015-2016) the passage of Proposition 47. We decompose disparities in court dispositions into components resulting from racial/ethnic differences in offense characteristics, involvement in the criminal justice system at the time of arrest, pretrial detention, criminal history, and the residual unexplained component. Before and after Proposition 47, case characteristics explain nearly all of the observable disparities in court dispositions between racial and ethnic groups. After the passage of Proposition 47, however, there is a narrowing of disparities in convictions and incarceration sentences that is driven by lesser weight placed on criminal history, active criminal justice status, and pretrial detention in effecting court dispositions Policy Implications: The findings from this study suggest that policy reforms that scale back the severity of punishment for criminal history and active criminal justice status for less serious felony offenses may help narrow inter-racial and inter-ethnic inequalities in criminal court dispositions. Efforts to reduce racial and ethnic inequalities in mass incarceration in other states should consider reforms that reduce the weight that criminal history, pretrial detention, and active probation status has on criminal defendants' eligibility for prison for less serious drug and property offenses.

Institutionalizing inequality in the courts: Decomposing racial and ethnic disparities in detention, conviction, and sentencing*

“…Because the original data did not include ethnicity information, we used the Hispanic Surname List from the U.S. Census Bureau to determine Latino ethnicity (Word, Coleman, Nunziata, & Kominski, 2008). Variants of this approach have been used in prior criminal justice studies (Beckett, Nyrop, & Pfingst, 2006; King & Johnson, 2016; MacDonald & Raphael, 2019) and have been validated with self‐report data (Elliott et al., 2009; Wei, Virnig, John, & Morgan, 2006). We classified a person as Latino if 75 percent or more of the individuals with their surname self‐identified as Hispanic, or if the person was from a Spanish speaking nation other than Spain.…”

Effect of sentencing reform on racial and ethnic disparities in involvement with the criminal justice system: The case of California's proposition 47

“…A further disparate impact example comes from the growing body of quasi‐experimental research finding that pretrial detention increases the likelihood of conviction (Dobbie, Goldin, & Yang, 2018; Donnelly & MacDonald, 2018; Heaton, Mayson, & Stevenson, 2017), may increase the likelihood of future offending (Heaton et al., 2017), and contributes to racial disparities in case outcomes (Donnelly & MacDonald, 2018; MacDonald & Raphael, 2019). Racial differences in average income and wealth lead to racial disparities in the ability to make bail.…”

“…They also find comparable declines and narrowing racial disparities for other offenses reclassified as result of the proposition. MacDonald and Raphael (2019) study administrative data on criminal cases processed by the San Francisco District Attorney before and after the passage of Prop 47. The authors find a narrowing of racial disparities in case outcomes largely attributable to lessening of the adverse effects of pretrial detention and criminal history on case outcomes.…”

The Effect of Sentencing Reform on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Involvement with the Criminal Justice System: The Case of California's Proposition 47

“…In the same manner that these enhanced penalties for crack offenses disproportionately impacted African American, the recent partial reversal of the crackpowder cocaine sentencing difference should have disparate impacts in the reverse direction. A further disparate impact example comes from the growing body of quasi-experimental research finding that pre-trial detention increases the likelihood of conviction (Dobbie, Golden, and Yang 2018;Donnelly & MacDonald, 2018;Heaton, Mayson, and Stevenson 2017;Stevenson 2017) may increase the likelihood of future offending (Heaton, Mayson, and Stevenson 2017), and contributed to racial disparities in case outcomes (Donnelly & MacDonald 2018;MacDonald and Raphael 2019). Racial differences in average income and wealth lead to racial disparities in the ability to make bail.…”

“…They also find comparable declines and narrowing racial disparities for other offenses reclassified as result of the proposition. MacDonald and Raphael (2019) study administrative data on criminal cases processed by the San Francisco District Attorney before and after the passage of proposition 47. The authors find a narrowing of racial disparities in case outcomes largely attributable to lessening of the adverse effects of pretrial detention and criminal history on case outcomes.…”