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Originally Posted by DrPhil
For instance, crack cocaine and powder cocaine sentencing disparities are not just about judges (or juries) intentionally handing out tougher sentences for lower class and minority offenders. Social class is correlated with race just as the types of drugs that people deal and use are correlated with race. That affects arrest, as well, with an understanding that minorities and poorer people are arrested for crack cocaine than powder cocaine. Correlates of race such as education, employment, and social class are no secret to these decision makers and disparities in outcome are factors of these. Decision makers simply respond by saying that crack cocaine was/is linked to a violent crack cocaine epidemic and that the psychotic effects of crack cocaine are different than powder cocaine---prior offense and other legal factors are also considered. Still, there are race, social class, education, etc...correlates of this that result in a certain outcome despite intent and justification.
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I really like this example - I think it nicely covers both the breadth of the issue and the depth of the problem.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrPhil
Suffice it to say that when controlling for prior convictions and other legal factors, a lot of research consistently finds extralegal factors such as race and social class are not salient while other research still finds them to be salient. That debate aside, the substantive significance of extralegal factors is not contingent upon statistical significance if we're arguing that there are more embedded and less visible processes that lead to very clear outcomes.
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All of this sort of research is subject to so many assumptions that it wouldn't be too hard to meet a 95% confidence interval supporting whatever hypothesis you set out to prove - I will say that it doesn't pass a "smell test" for me to simply claim that the entirety of the disparity in sentencing between whites and blacks is based on socioeconomic factors, though, and I'm quite suspicious of research that claims that as its analysis.
The issue, then, becomes whether the 'best' way to approach the problem (again, hypothetically) requires addressing the underlying factors or the agents - to me, it seems that a top-down approach attacking the underlying factors will naturally lead to change in the agents, but a.) that's a
decidedly long-term solution that may not be practical and b.) it's quite pie-in-the-sky. With those caveats and to get back to preciousjeni's question, I'll guess it's not too likely that many decision makers stand up and say "hey, we're on the wrong path here when it comes to the legal or criminal justice systems" - at least not immediately - and that this shouldn't be expected until there's more awareness of the underlying factors involved.