Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System: Prevalence, Causes, and a Search for Solutions

Abstract

Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are well documented and widespread. The present review examines racial disparities in three areas of the system: policing, prison populations, and participation on juries. Some, but not all, of these disparities may be the result of implicit racial bias. Even if the disparities are caused by implicit racial bias, given the number of people involved in the decision making that results in these disparities and the difficulty in training people to overcome implicit bias, interventions designed to eliminate disparities by reducing implicit racial bias may fail. Instead, policies designed to constrain the operation of implicit and/or explicit bias or that eliminate (or at a minimum reduce) problematic outcomes for everyone, regardless of race, may be more effective at reducing racial disparities than are interventions designed to eliminate implicit bias.

Internalized Racism: A Systematic Review of the Psychological Literature on Racism's Most Insidious Consequence

“…In other words, it seems that more people are becoming aware that existing policies, norms, and institutions may privilege some racial groups while denying such privilege to other groups, and that such privilege and power inequalities between racial groups is a necessary component of racism (Prilleltensky & Laurier, ). Increased discussions about how racism exists and operates in interpersonal interactions and institutions (for an example of interpersonal and institutional racism, see Kovera, ) seem to suggest that people are becoming more aware that racism is systemic and everywhere . However, fewer people seem to be aware that racism also exists and operates within people.…”

Forging Diversity‐Science‐Informed Guidelines for Research on Race and Racism in Psychological Science

“…More recent examples of the importance of evidence‐based policy abound, including the discovery that many common‐sense police practices increase the risk of false confessions and disproportionately affect criminal suspects of color (e.g., American Psychological Association, ; Kassin et al., ; Kassin, Redlich, Alceste, & Luke, ); the awareness of the prevalence and consequences of implicit racial biases in individual and institutional discrimination, in direct contradiction to the ruling in Washington v. Davis (; e.g., Greenwald & Banaji, ; Jost et al., ; Kovera, ); and the discovery that police department policies promoting the use of Terry stops (i.e., stop‐and‐frisks; Terry v. Ohio) both fail to identify more crime and disproportionately harm communities of color (e.g., Hester & Gray, ; Jones‐Brown, Stoudt, Johnston, & Moran, ; Saunders, Kelly, Cohen, & Guarino, ; Sewell, Jefferson, & Lee, ).…”

Bias Awareness Predicts Color Conscious Racial Socialization Methods among White Parents

“…Despite their tendency to endorse egalitarianism (Dovidio, ; Dovidio, Gaertner, & Pearson, ), the majority of White individuals in the United States continue to show evidence of implicit negative attitudes toward Black individuals (Xu, Nosek, & Greenwald, ). These attitudes have been linked to negative intergroup outcomes, including subtle forms of prejudice (Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, ; Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, ) and racial disparities (Kovera, ). Although willingness to recognize (their own and systemic) bias has been shown to be one of the strongest predictors of increased intergroup empathy and reduced prejudice (Monteith & Mark, ; Monteith, Mark, & Ashburn‐Nardo, ; Ozier, Taylor, & Murphy, ; Nelson, Adams, & Salter, ), most White individuals are uncomfortable even discussing race and racism (Pauker, Apfelbaum, & Spitzer, ) or using racial labels (Karmali, Kawakami, Vaccarino, Williams, Phills, & Friesen, ), and tend to avoid it (Apfelbaum, Sommers, & Norton, ).…”