Examining the “Life Course” of Criminal Cases

• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12133
• Author: Brian D. Johnson

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

DISADVANTAGE AND SENTENCING OF

BLACK DEFENDANTS

Examining the “Life Course” of Criminal

Cases

A New Frontier in Sentencing Research

Brian D. Johnson

University of Maryland

Few issues in crime, law, and justice have garnered greater attention from legal

scholars, politicians, or the American public than racial disparities in the criminal

justice system. African-American defendants are overrepresented at each stage of the

justice system —they are disproportionately arrested, detained, and incarcerated relative to

their proportion in the general population (Walker, Spohn, and Delone, 2012). Recent years

have witnessed growing momentum for more nuanced empirical approaches to the study of

racial disproportionality with an emergent emphasis on cumulative disadvantages that accrue

across the life course of criminal case processing decisions (Kutateladze, Andiloro, Johnson,

and Spohn, 2014). Much like life-course criminology emphasizes changing life events and

their differential effects on criminal behavior across developmental stages (e.g., Sampson

and Laub, 1993; Thornberry, 1987), emergent perspectives on criminal case processing

stress the differential and cumulative impact that race and other offender characteristics

exert across the “life course” of successive decision-making stages in the justice system.

The research article and policy essays presented herein highlight the importance of

moving from single-stage analyses that present only a snapshot of individual outcomes

toward more dynamic, multistage investigations that account for both the direct and the

indirect causal pathways that can contribute to racial disadvantage. They offer important

contributions to our understanding of racial disparity, provide unique insights into cumu-

lative and offsetting racial impacts, and contribute new evidence to ongoing policy debates

over the locus and magnitude of racial disproportionality in the justice system.

Direct correspondence to Brian D. Johnson, University of Maryland, College Park, 2220 Lefrak Hall, College

Park, MD 20742 (e-mail: bjohnso2@umd.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12133 C2015 American Society of Criminology 183

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 14 rIssue 2