Line prosecutors attribute racial disparities to poverty and minority culture, not bias

Evidence

Most line prosecutors acknowledge the overrepresentation of people of color in the CJS, often referencing a stark contrast in the skin color among defendants they see in courtrooms on a daily basis. There is a widespread belief that these disparities are not reflective of differential treatment by law enforcement and that it is not racial bias that drives these disparities. Most said that, instead, it was the poverty and lack of opportunities in minority neighborhoods that caused crime, which leads law enforcement to focus more on these neighborhoods and make arrests. They argued that equally impactful is the existence of minority cultures in which dysfunctional family structures are more common, youths have little supervision, and violence and incarceration are normalized. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 601

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral-panic and race-as-signaling literature in the reader’s existing library, and to Laypeople’s-views-of-crime work. Also echoes the ‘colorblind ideology’ mechanism in racial-studies literature.
• SEED: Essay angle: prosecutorial colorblind ideology as a load-bearing institutional fiction that lets the machine function without self-blame. The mechanism — ‘if we don’t know race, we can’t be racist’ plus ‘disparities precede us’ — is a neat, named psychological defense worth unpacking.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 601