Darker skin tone within a racial group yields longer prison sentences

Evidence

Not only is discriminatory treatment by the CJS affected by the status of the social category to which one belongs—for example, White, Latino, and Black—it also is affected by the hue of one’s skin within these racial/ethnic categories. For example, in their study of 12,000 imprisoned Black women in North Carolina between 1995 and 2009, Viglione, Hannon, and DeFina (2011) discovered that skin tone, as perceived by correctional officers, was related to the length of one’s prison sentence and the actual length of time served. Controlling for a number of legally relevant factors, the darker a defendant’s skin tone, the longer the prison sentence the defendant was condemned to serve and the more time actually served. Similarly, using the data collected from male prisoners by the Georgia Department of Corrections, after controlling for legally relevant factors such as type of crime, the darker the skin tone of the Black defendants, the longer the prison term they received. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the sentences received by White prisoners and light-skinned Black prisoners (Burch, 2015). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 52 (#expands, via linked claim)

Studies involving the effects of darker skin and Afrocentricity of features on drug sentences and death penalty decisions are particularly powerful: skin tone and Afrocentric features were associated with significantly longer sentences in drug cases in Florida (Eberhardt et al., 2004) and were correlated with a greater likelihood of receiving the death penalty in cases where the victim was White (Eberhardt et al., 2006). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1366 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Skin tone predicts police stops for Latinos as well as Blacks; Darker skin tone lengthens prison sentences even after legal factors are controlled.; Black drug and murder defendants receive harsher punishment than White ones (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Within-race skin tone predicts sentence length independent of legal factors #expands (0.97) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 52
• Darker skin and Afrocentric features predict longer drug sentences and death sentences #expands (0.95) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1366