Prosecutors rarely collect the data needed to detect racial bias

Evidence

First and foremost is to improve data collection. No system that relies on data can lead to reliable outcomes if the data are not complete and accurate. When it comes to the law, and especially criminal law, data collection is notoriously poor (Executive Office of the President, 2016). Many offices, such as prosecutors’ offices, keep little data, and what data they do keep, they try to keep confidential. This has been the norm for many years. That said, change is afoot. Connecticut just passed legislation requiring prosecutors to compile data on how many defendants received prison time, plea bargains, or were diverted, and the data must be parsed by race, ethnicity, sex, and age (Mystal, 2019). Other prosecutors’ offices around the country are making similar efforts to collect data that is necessary for determining whether similarly situated defendants are being treated similarly (Kutateladze et al. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1176

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the book’s earlier discussion of disparate treatment with a concrete data-infrastructure gap: bias is invisible where no outcome data exists.