Title: Black men sentenced to more time for committing the exact same crime as a white person, study finds - The Washington Post
Headings: Black men sentenced to more time for committing the exact same crime as a white person, study finds
Black men sentenced to more time for committing the exact same crime as a white person, study finds
Content: And even when judges do reduce black offenders' sentences, they do so by smaller amounts than for white offenders. That finding suggests that giving judges more discretion in sentencing, as the Booker decision did in 2005, allows more racial bias to seep into the process. But Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a group working to reduce bias in the criminal justice system, says there's more to it than that. He says that decisions by federal prosecutors — whether to seek a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence, for instance — are also driving the disparities. Advertisement
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“What we see is that the charging decisions of prosecutors are key,” he said via email. “ Whether done consciously or not, prosecutors are more likely to charge African Americans with such charges than whites.” A 2014 University of Michigan Law School study, for instance, found that all other factors being equal, black offenders were 75 percent more likely to face a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence than a white offender who committed the same crime. “It's possible that if a prosecutor now recognizes that a judge is not constrained by the [pre-Booker] guidelines,” Mauer said, “he or she may charge a case as a mandatory sentence to ensure that a certain amount of prison time is imposed, with no possible override by the judge.” Story continues below advertisement
The United States currently houses the world's largest prison population, with an incarceration rate of roughly 666 inmates per 100,000 people. Among whites, the rate is 450 inmates per 100,000 people.