The Long Shadow of Police Racial Treatment: Racial Disparity in Criminal Justice Processing

AuthorAndré Kiesel,Jaeok Kim
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12842
Published date01 May 2018
Date01 May 2018
422 Public Administration Review • May | June 2018
Public Administration Review,
Vol. 78, Iss. 3, pp. 422–431. © 2017 by
The American Society for Public Administration.
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12842.
Research Article
André Kiesel is a PhD student in the
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and
Policy, University at Albany, SUNY. His
research focuses on the plea bargaining
process, criminal justice processing, and
class discrimination in plea bargaining.
Jaeok Kim is a postdoctoral fellow in
the Research Network on Misdemeanor
Justice at John Jay College of Criminal
Justice. Her research focuses on criminal
case processing, demographic differences
in system treatment, criminal career, and
measurement errors.
E-mail: jakim@jjay.cuny.edu
Abstract : This article explores racial disproportionality in criminal justice processing in an era of punitive criminal
justice policies and mass incarceration. Using arrest data from New York State, the authors compare the racial
disparity in prison sentencing with the disparity at arrest while controlling for crime type and criminal history of
the arrest population. Findings show that the racial disparity in prison sentencing at the state level is established
before courts begin criminal case proceedings. Scholars and policy makers interested in the sources of racial disparity
in incarceration should concentrate on the processes that generate crime and arrests. However, a decrease in racial
disparity at prison sentencing, relative to arrest, suggests that the practices of courtroom actors still merit scholarly
attention.
Evidence for Practice
The racial disparity that exists at prison sentencing is, for the most part, already in place at arrest. This
implies that the effect of law enforcement practices at arrest is a major source of minority overrepresentation
in prison.
A decrease in racial disproportionality between arrest and prison sentencing between 1990 and 2010 suggests
that courtroom actors can mitigate disparities that exist at arrest.
Large regional variations in the extent of racial disproportionality emphasize the importance of understanding
criminal justice processing at the local level and encouraging the independent efforts of local criminal justice
actors to ensure that their own practices do not exacerbate racial disparity.
Institutional efforts to keep reliable records on policing activities involving arrest will help us understand
whether and how racial disparity at arrest is initiated.
Jaeok Kim
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
André Kiesel
University at Albany, SUNY
The Long Shadow of Police Racial Treatment:
Racial Disparity in Criminal Justice Processing
T he disproportionately high incarceration rate
among African Americans raises the concern
that the American criminal justice system is
treating people differently based on race and leads
to the question, at what stage of criminal justice
processing does this disparity culminate? The racial
disparity in the incarceration rate is much higher than
the racial disparity at arrest. For example, in 2010,
the arrest rate for blacks was twice the rate for whites,
while the incarceration rate for blacks was seven times
the rate for whites (Glaze and Parks 2012 ). Pettit and
Western ( 2004 ) also estimated that the cumulative
risk of imprisonment for black males was more than
20 percent among those born in the 1960s, while only
3 percent of corresponding white males were at risk
of incarceration. This difference in the racial makeup
of the arrest and incarceration populations implies
that there is differential treatment of defendants in
the criminal justice system by race, either by way of
discrimination or through formal mechanisms in
response to different crime patterns.
Previous research on racial disparity in prison
sentences has focused only on the back end of the
criminal justice process, most notably, sentencing after
a plea or trial (Wooldredge et al. 2015 ). Although
there are conflicting findings on the influence of a
defendant s race on incarceration decisions, studies
have found a small but significant effect of race on
either the decision to incarcerate or the length of
the prison sentence if incarcerated (Rehavi and Starr
2012 ; Spohn 2008 ; Stolzenberg, D ’ Alessio, and Eitle
2013 ). Given the small magnitude of the effect of
race on sentencing, scholars have concluded that
discriminatory sentencing practices, if any, may not
be the major driver of minority overrepresentation in
the prison population (Mitchell 2005 ; Wooldredge
etal. 2015 ). Although examining the effect of race on
sentencing decisions is both meaningful and necessary,
it is important to understand differential system
treatment from a more holistic view by recognizing a
series of decision points that precede the sentencing
decision (Baumer 2013 ; Zatz 2000 ). An incarceration

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