Race still sways sentencing even after legal factors dominate outcomes

Evidence

The sentencing research suggests that legally relevant factors, rather than race, exert the strongest influence on punishment (Mitchell, 2005; Spohn, 2000). Though legally relevant factors are the most important, race still plays a role when it should not matter at all after considering legal factors. Let us imagine if defendants’ race had a greater influence on their sentence than what type of crime they have been convicted of. If this were the case, then a White person convicted of a murder might be getting a lighter sentence than a Black person convicted of petty larceny. The fact that the system is not so grossly discriminatory is no cause for applause. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 561

Categorization

• CANDY: “Not so grossly discriminatory is no cause for applause” is a sharp, quotable formulation of why low-level residual disparity still matters.