Racial discrimination in imprisonment is far stronger against men than women

Evidence

One not so obvious implication of TGP as applied to the CJS is that the severity of negative sanctions imposed by the CJS will also tend to be an interactive function of one’s gender and one’s arbitrary-set membership. Further, the Seventh Law-of-Law predicts that the specific nature of this interaction will be such that subordinate males will be the disproportionate victims of arbitrary-set discrimination within the CJS and to a substantially greater degree than will subordinate females. For example, while one might or might not find evidence of racial discrimination within the CJS against Black women, one should expect to see rather strong evidence of racial discrimination within the CJS against Black men. … As can be seen in figure 1.1, the overall rate of imprisonment was lower for dominants (i.e., Whites) than for either of the two subordinate groups (i.e., Hispanics or Blacks). Consistent with the TGP is the fact that the effect of race (an arbitrary-set category) on imprisonment is strongly conditioned by one’s gender. Comparing the imprisonment rates for Hispanic versus White defendants, we see that the imprisonment rate for Hispanic women was only 38 percent higher than for White women. In contrast, among men, Hispanics are imprisoned at more than four times the rate for Whites. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 99

Perhaps, the clearest way to appreciate gender-moderated racial differences in discrimination can be found in criminal justice outcomes. Figure 10.2 gives ratios of imprisonment in state and federal prisons for blacks and whites, and Latinos and whites as a function of gender for the year 2006. In sum, black men were imprisoned at a rate six times greater than that of white men. In contrast, the racial disparity among black and white women was less extreme, with black women being imprisoned at a rate three times greater than that of white women. This same basic pattern also held with respect to whites and Latinos. In addition, Ayres and Waldfogel (1994) have shown that racial discrimination in bail amounts is only found with respect to black and Latino men, and not with respect to black or Latino women. Similar patterns of gendered racial discrimination have been substantiated within the criminal justice system of the United Kingdom (Hood & Cordovil, 1992). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1226

Categorization

• XREF: Quantitative anchor for the reader’s interest in how legally codified race interacts with gender — the intersectional disparity data (Hispanic women +38% vs Hispanic men 4x) is a concrete benchmark for later chapters.
• ADDENDUM: Would strengthen the racialized-violence thread with a concrete, quantified asymmetry that complicates ‘general racism’ framings by showing it is gender-moderated.
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 99; Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1226