Racial disparities compound at every stage of the criminal justice process

Evidence

While there is still some controversy regarding the existence of racial discrimination within the American criminal justice system (CJS), the bulk of the empirical evidence seems to indicate that African Americans and Latinos are systematically discriminated against within the CJS and at each and every stage of the criminal justice process. All else being equal, compared to European Americans, African Americans and Latinos are significantly more likely to be stopped and frisked by the police, once stopped are more likely to be detained, once detained more likely to be arrested and charged with an offense, once charged are more likely to be indicted and subject to trial, once tried are more likely to be convicted, once convicted are less likely to be granted probation and less likely to be granted parole. They are thus more likely to serve more time in prison than equally situated European American defendants. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 48

Categorization

• DEFINE: Serves as the foundational framing of the book’s subject matter — systemic racial disparity at every CJS stage.
• SEED: The ‘cascade’ structure — each stage’s disparity building on the last — could anchor an explainer on how bias compounds across a pipeline.
• 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…, 48