Racial-Ethnic Disparities in Police and Prosecutorial Drug Charging: Analyzing Organizational Overlap in Charging Patterns at Arrest, Filing, and Conviction

• Author: Oshea Johnson,Marisa Omori,Nick Petersen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00224278221120810
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Racial-Ethnic

Disparities in Police

and Prosecutorial

Drug Charging:

Analyzing

Organizational

Overlap in Charging

Patterns at Arrest,

Filing, and Conviction

Oshea Johnson

1

,

Marisa Omori

2

,

and Nick Petersen

1

Abstract

Objective: Explore racial-ethnic disparities in drug charging trajectories from

arrest to conviction. Methods: We analyze racial-ethnic disparities in charging

severity across arrest, f‌iling, and conviction for felony drug offense cases in

Miami-Dade County between 2010-2015 (N=25,559) using a “distance trav-

eled”approach by estimating the severity of charges based on the probability

1

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

2

Department of Criminology and Criminal justice, University of Missouri –St. Louis, MO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Oshea Johnson, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Miami, 5202

University Dr. Coral Gables, FL, 33146, USA.

Email: osheadjohnson@gmail.com

Thematic Issue: Centering Race in the Study of Crime and Criminal Justice

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2023, Vol. 60(2) 255–299

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278221120810

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

of incarceration at conviction. We use these estimates to predict the severity

of charges at arrest and f‌iling, and examine differences in the severity of char-

ges between stages. Results: Compared to White non-Latinx people, police

charge Black Latinx people with drug crimes that are 1.8 times more severe

and Black non-Latinx people with drug crimes that are 1.6 times more severe

at arrest. These inequalities are maintained throughout the charging trajec-

tory. Greater charge reductions occur between arrest and f‌iling than between

f‌iling and conviction, highlighting the importance of police in charging trajec-

tories. We f‌ind small increases in charging trajectory, where racial-ethnic dis-

parities persist at conviction. Conclusions: Examining charging at arrest is

critical to understanding racial-ethnic disparities in charging trajectories,

where unequal arrest charges become institutionalized throughout the charg-

ing process. Organizational dynamics between police and prosecutors may

lead to drug charging practices that systematically disadvantage Black people

in Miami-Dade County.

Keywords

corrections, incarceration, race/ethnicity, policing, drugs, research

methods, quantitative research

The war on drugs produced racialized mass incarceration across the U.S.,

acting as a key driver of racial inequality within criminal justice institu-

tions more broadly (Alexander 2012; Lynch 2016; Pfaff 2017).

Changes to sentencing policies, including three strikes, mandatory mini-

mums, and sentencing guidelines, have shifted discretion in punishment

towards prosecutorial charging (Spohn 2009). With police having the

power to arrest and present discretionary charges (Phillips and Varano

2008), and prosecutors acting as “gatekeepers for all criminal charges,”

these two front-end court actors have organizationally distinct yet mutu-

ally reinforcing powers and roles (Richman 2021:293). The drug war also

increased punitiveness in criminal justice on the front end of the system,

including proactive policing, assembly-line justice plea-bargaining, and

other “hard bargaining”prosecutorial tactics (Lynch 2012; Lynch and

Omori 2018). Although state and federal off‌icials have since started to

walk back some of the more draconian policies since the height of the

drug war (Alexander 2012), these changes to prosecution, and especially

charging practices, continue to play a large role in racialized mass incar-

ceration (Beck and Blumstein 2018; Lynch 2016; Pfaff 2017). However,

256 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60(2)

we have relatively limited knowledge of how these practices operate on

the ground in local contexts to produce racial inequalities in mass crimi-

nalization, especially in more recent years. Less is known about how

police and prosecutor charging practices contribute to racial disparities

in sentencing (Johnson, King, and Spohn 2016; Johnson and Larroulet

2019; Barno and Lynch 2021), and whether/how charging translate into

racial inequalities in incarceration (Lynch and Omori 2018).

Examining charging practices, and how they contribute to racial and

ethnic inequalities in incarceration rates, is important for several

reasons. Foremost, given the discretionary nature and breadth of drug

laws, much of the racial inequality within the criminal justice system

can be linked to policies and practices implemented during the war on

drugs (Alexander 2012; Davis 2019; Lynch 2016; Pfaff 2017), making

the study of drug charging practices important for understanding racial

disparities in criminal justice more generally. Moreover, charging deci-

sions often have a greater impact on punishment outcomes than sentenc-

ing decisions (Wright and Engen 2006) and research suggests front-end

decision-making, such as determining the number and severity of criminal

charges, “anchors”downstream case outcomes in the plea bargaining

process (Bibas 2004; Miller 2013). Because plea bargaining is the

modal method of attaining a conviction for almost all criminal cases in

Miami and elsewhere (Davis 2007; Fellner 2013; Lynch 2016; Pastore

and Maguire 2003; Pfaff 2017), some racial-ethnic inequalities in court

outcomes are attributable to charging (Barno and Lynch 2021; Davis

2019; Omori and Petersen 2020).

In Miami Dade County, understanding charging across early stages (i.e.,

arrest and f‌iling) is particularly important because police and prosecutors

have a pre-f‌iling conference during the f‌iling stage of a court case. Such

pre-f‌ile conferences may be particularly important in shaping the trajectory

of drug cases, where police-prosecutor collaborations are typically stronger

due to the increased reliance on police as witnesses (Bibas 2004; Miller

2013; Richman 2021). Additionally, research on cumulative disadvantage

suggests that racial disparities early in the court system compound over

many discretionary points (Kutateladze et al. 2014; Spohn 2008; Sutton

2013), and that there are substantial downstream impacts of early court pro-

cessing decisions (Owens, Kerrison, and Santos Da Silveira 2017; Ulmer,

Painter-Davis, and Tinik 2016). While prosecutors may suggest that they

use a race-neutral lens in decision-making, defendants still feel the effects

of their decisions (Davis 2007; Barno and Lynch 2021). Thus, understand-

ing how racial inequalities in charging from the beginning of the case at

Johnson et al. 257