27. Criminal Justice

The lifetime chance of imprisonment is very high for people of color compared to white people.
Black men - 1 in 3
Latino men - 1 in 6
White men - 1 in 17
Black women - 1 in 18
Latina women - 1 in 45
White women 1 in 111

One in every ten black men in their 30s is in jail on any given day.

Many, I know, will bring up the disproportionate crime rate of black men. Black people make up about 13% of the population and comprise 39% of violent crime arrests. The causes of this are heavily debated.

While this explains the disparity to a certain extent, when controlling for arrest records and other similar factors, a study by M. Marit Rehavi and Sonja B. Starr entitled, “Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its Sentencing Consequences” found the following:
---prosecutors charge black men with a “mandatory minimum sentence” crime twice as many times as whites.
---black defendants receive charges that are about 6% to 9% more severe than white defendants’.
---blacks are more likely to be incarcerated.
---Their sentences are 10% longer for the same crime and similarly situated as white men.

Blacks are 25% less likely than whites to receive a sentence below the sentencing guidelines.

All-white juries are more likely than diverse juries to sentence blacks to death.

Overall, blacks and whites are victims of homicide at the same rate. Over 70% of the killers of whites are sentenced to death while 15% of the killers of blacks are sentenced to death.

References:
Imprisonment rates -
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/piusp01.pdf

Rehavi and Starr report -
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377
mandatory minimum sentence charge (pages 10-11)
more severe charges (page 11)
more likely to be incarcerated (page 15)
longer sentences (page 17)
summary of the report (starts page 24)

Less likely to receive sentences below guidelines -
http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/news/congressional-testimony-and-reports/booker-reports/2012-booker/Part_E.pdf (page 22)

Death penalty and victims by race -
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/dpic-summary-federal-death-penalty-sytem-statistical-survey (summary of a Department of Justice study which is linked at the end; the study itself is not very reader-friendly which is why I’m linking this summary instead)