How Biased is the Criminal Justice System?
A new meta-analysis suggests it's not as biased as we've been led to believe
Just a brief note to highlight an interesting new meta-analysis by Chris Ferguson and Sven Smith about race and class bias in the U.S. criminal justice system. TL; DR: For most crimes, the researchers found no compelling evidence that Blacks or Hispanics receive harsher sentences than Whites or Asians, and no compelling evidence that poorer defendants receive harsher sentences than wealthier ones. They did find evidence for racial bias in sentencing for drug crimes, but the effect sizes were very small. Higher quality studies found less evidence for bias, as did studies exhibiting lower levels of citation bias.
The near absence of race and class bias in sentencing is a surprising finding, and I’m not sure yet whether I buy it it. At the very least, though, it’s worth thinking through the issue. To that end, here are some excerpts from the paper.
Background
The issue of racial and class justice as it relates to criminal adjudication is an important one. The social contract depends on faith in the criminal justice system as a neutral arbiter. Perceptions and experiences of bias in the criminal justice system reduce public confidence and lead to social discord. In recent years it has become common belief within the scholarly community as well as the general public that the criminal justice system is biased due to race and class issues... Specifically, there is concern that Black and Latino defendants as well as poorer defendants receive harsher sentences than Whites or Asians or wealthier defendants. We tested this in a meta-analytic review of 51 studies [published between 2005 to 2022] including 120 effect sizes.
Main Findings
Effect sizes in studies from 2005 on are relatively minimal. These effect sizes are about β = 0.06, but evidence suggests that effect sizes below β = 0.10 are indistinguishable from statistical noise…
Overall results suggested that neither class nor race biases for criminal adjudications for either violent or property crimes could be reliably detected... Our findings for drug crimes were the one exception to our observations. Here, evidence did exceed our evidentiary standards. Nonetheless, effect sizes are still very weak, with race/ethnicity explaining only 1.3 to 2.2 % in the adjudication of drug crimes.
Study Quality and Citation Bias
Better quality studies were less likely to produce results supportive of disparities. Studies with citation bias [that is, studies only citing evidence supporting their hypotheses] produced higher effect sizes than did studies without citation bias suggesting that researcher expectancy effects may be driving some outcomes in this field, resulting in an overestimation of true effects.
Analysis
Given a long history of slavery and racism in the United States it is reasonable to worry about disparities continuing to the present day… [However] evidence for racial bias in the US criminal justice system has been consistently weak, and scholarly narratives have too often ignored this in favor of the systemic racism narrative… Negativity bias and the overinterpretation of statistically significant “noise” from large sample studies appear to have allowed the perception or bias to be maintained among scholars, despite a weak evidentiary base…
Generally speaking, evidence from this study does not support theoretical perspectives arising from racial resentment, Critical Race Theory or narratives [of] “systemic racism” as relates to criminal adjudication. Overall, the criminal justice system appears to be remarkably neutral, at least as relates to these issues... This does not mean there is not potential for bias in other areas such as police treatment, arrests, or other outcomes, as our analysis is limited to adjudications…
Our results are consistent with other data which suggests that overrepresentation among perpetrators of crime explains incarceration disparities to a greater degree than does racism in the criminal justice system. Policy, as such, may do better to understand the causes for disparities in the perpetration of crime. These are unlikely to relate to race per se, but rather community factors associated with poverty.
Recommendations
We believe that there remain excellent reasons to advocate for many criminal justice reforms. The US incarceration rate remains uniquely high, and support for community integration of former inmates is low…US penalties for drug crimes tend to be particularly severe. It may also be the case that drugs that are more commonly used by ethnic minorities (crack cocaine for instance) may be associated with harsher penalties…
Nonetheless, miscommunication of extant evidence can also do harm… [I]t is likely that many people overestimate the racial bias of the criminal justice system… [T]his may, in part, be due to biases within the field and throughout academia… It has been observed that social science is liberal/progressive leaning for decades and to the extent that progressive worldviews on race have become status-signaling in academic communities and critical evaluation of such beliefs taboo, this may result in significant miscommunication of research data to the general public…
We note the possibility that overstating the case for sentencing disparities may itself cause harm to minority communities through increasing racial discord, creating fear and mistrust, and reducing community cooperation with criminal justice authorities, which may lead to the experiencing of more crime. Certainly, the US criminal justice system has a history of systemic racism. However, current evidence suggests that the criminal justice system is a much more neutral arbiter than many assume, at least on race issues…
Overall, this is a cause for optimism even if we must remain vigilant for negative shifts in the future.
You can read the paper here; unfortunately, though, it’s behind a paywall.