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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race

Federal Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentences: Weapon In The War On Drugs Or War On Blacks, Crystal S. Byrd Nov 2005

Federal Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentences: Weapon In The War On Drugs Or War On Blacks, Crystal S. Byrd

McCabe Thesis Collection

This study will attempt to determine the direct and indirect consequences of Federal mandatory minimum drug sentences and drug policy to African Americans. It will examine statistics on drug use, arrest, convictions, and incarceration of African Americans. These statistics will be gathered from several government agencies and will be used to determine if American drug policy discriminates against African Americans. The purpose of this study is to inform and educate African Americans about Federal mandatory minimum drug sentences and the impact they are having on Black communities and to provide links to resources that can be used to promote drug …


Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd Jan 2005

Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article does not challenge the prior research on sentencing discrimination between racial categories that found no significant difference in sentences given to similarly-situated African Americans and Whites. In fact, in the jurisdiction investigated- Florida- no discrimination between African Americans and Whites was found in the sentences imposed on defendants, looking only at racial category differences. Rather, the research suggests that in focusing exclusively on discrimination between racial groups, the research has missed a type of discrimination related to race that is taking place within racial categories: namely, discrimination on the basis of a person's Afrocentric features. By Afrocentric features, …


Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd Jan 2005

Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd

Publications

For a long time, social scientists have worried about possible racial discrimination in sentencing in the United States. With a prison population that exceeds two million inmates of whom approximately 48% are African American, the worry over the fairness of the sentencing process is understandable. This article is not about discrimination between racial categories as such, but about a related form of discrimination, namely, discrimination on the basis of a person's Afro-centric features. Section I of the article describes a line of social science research that shows that a person's Afro-centric features have a strong biasing effect on judgment such …


Against Prediction: Sentencing, Policing, And Punishing In An Actuarial Age, Bernard E. Harcourt Jan 2005

Against Prediction: Sentencing, Policing, And Punishing In An Actuarial Age, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Actuarial methods – i.e., the use of statistical rather than clinical methods on large datasets of criminal offending rates to determine different levels of offending associated with one or more group traits, in order to (1) predict past, present or future criminal behavior and (2) administer a criminal justice outcome – now permeates the criminal law and its enforcement. With the single exception of racial profiling against African-Americans and Hispanics, most people view the turn to the actuarial as efficient, rational, and wealth-maximizing. The fact is, law enforcement agencies can detect more crime with the same resources if they investigate …


An Analysis Of The Nypd's Stop-And-Frisk Policy In The Context Of Claims Of Racial Bias, Andrew Gelman, Alex Kiss, Jeffrey Fagan Jan 2005

An Analysis Of The Nypd's Stop-And-Frisk Policy In The Context Of Claims Of Racial Bias, Andrew Gelman, Alex Kiss, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Recent studies by police departments and researchers confirm that police stop racial and ethnic minority citizens more often than whites, relative to their proportions in the population. However, it has been argued stop rates more accurately reflect rates of crimes committed by each ethnic group, or that stop rates reflect elevated rates in specific social areas such as neighborhoods or precincts. Most of the research on stop rates and police-citizen interactions has focused on traffic stops, and analyses of pedestrian stops are rare. In this paper, we analyze data from 175,000 pedestrian stops by the New York Police Department over …