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Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Law
Racial Disparity In Federal Criminal Sentences, M. Marit Rehavi, Sonja B. Starr
Racial Disparity In Federal Criminal Sentences, M. Marit Rehavi, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most of the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors’ initial charging decisions, particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge are 1.75 times higher than …
Applying Sex Offender Registry Laws To Juvenile Offenders: Biases Against Adolescents From Stigmatized Groups, Jessica M. Salerno, Margaret Stevenson, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Tisha R.A. Wiley, Bette L. Bottoms, Liana Peter-Hagene
Applying Sex Offender Registry Laws To Juvenile Offenders: Biases Against Adolescents From Stigmatized Groups, Jessica M. Salerno, Margaret Stevenson, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Tisha R.A. Wiley, Bette L. Bottoms, Liana Peter-Hagene
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
The need to protect children from dangerous sex offenders has led to policies that require juvenile sex offenders to register on public online registries. It is important to determine the implications of these laws for the wellbeing of child victims and also for juvenile offenders on these registries. Is the application of these laws—designed for adult offenders—to juveniles appropriate, necessary, and supported by public sentiment? The chapter reviews current sex offender registration policies and psychological research addressing whether the assumptions underlying these laws are supported by research, public sentiment toward these laws, factors that might drive biases against stigmatized youth …
Solving Batson, Tania Tetlow
Solving Batson, Tania Tetlow
Tania Tetlow
The Supreme Court faced an important ideological choice when it banned the racial use of peremptory challenges in Batson v. Kentucky. It could either ground the rule in equality rights designed to protect potential jurors from stereotyping, or it could base the rule on the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to an “impartial jury” drawn from a fair cross-section of the community. By choosing Equal Protection analysis, the Court turned away from the defendant and the fair functioning of the criminal justice system and instead focused on protecting potential jurors. The Court thus built fatal error into the Batson rule, a …
Evidence-Based Sentencing And The Scientific Rationalization Of Discrimination, Sonja B. Starr
Evidence-Based Sentencing And The Scientific Rationalization Of Discrimination, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
This Article critiques, on legal and empirical grounds, the growing trend of basing criminal sentences on actuarial recidivism risk prediction instruments that include demographic and socioeconomic variables. I argue that this practice violates the Equal Protection Clause and is bad policy: an explicit embrace of otherwise- condemned discrimination, sanitized by scientific language. To demonstrate that this practice raises serious constitutional concerns, I comprehensively review the relevant case law, much of which has been ignored by existing literature. To demonstrate that the policy is not justified by countervailing state interests, I review the empirical evidence underlying the instruments. I show that …
Beyond Title Vii: Rethinking Race, Ex-Offender Status, And Employment Discrimination In The Information Age, Kimani Paul-Emile
Beyond Title Vii: Rethinking Race, Ex-Offender Status, And Employment Discrimination In The Information Age, Kimani Paul-Emile
Faculty Scholarship
More than sixty-five million people in the United States—more than one in four adults—have had some involvement with the criminal justice system that will appear on a criminal history report. A rapidly expanding, for-profit industry has developed to collect these records and compile them into electronic databases, offering employers an inexpensive and readily accessible means of screening prospective employees. Nine out of ten employers now inquire into the criminal history of job candidates, systematically denying individuals with a criminal record any opportunity to gain work experience or build their job qualifications. This is so despite the fact that many individuals …