Prosecutor charging decisions, not judges, drive a 10 percent racial sentence gap.

Evidence

Prosecutors are less likely to offer Blacks a plea bargain, less likely to reduce charge offers for Blacks, and more likely to offer Blacks plea bargains that include prison time (Albonetti, 1990; 1992; Frenzel & Ball, 2007; Kutateladze, Andiloro, & Johnson, 2016; Kutateladze, Andiloro, Johnson, & Spohn, 2014; McDonald & Raphael, 2017). Defendants who are Black, young, and male fare especially poorly (Albonetti, 1990; Kellough & Wortley, 2002; Kutateladze, Andiloro, & Johnson, 2016). In a comprehensive study of federal cases, Rehavi and Starr (2014) found that Blacks received sentences that were 10 percent longer than those of similarly situated Whites and that this disparity was largely explained by prosecutors’ charging decisions. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1214

Categorization

• SEED: The finding that charging, not sentencing, explains the racial gap is a strong hook for an essay on where bias actually lives in the criminal system.