STUDY: Race Impacts Prison Sentencing

According to a recent study by the American Bar Association, African Americans are more likely to be sent to prison than whites, and that this gap is more pronounced among some judges.

The results show that judges are not colorblind.

Looking specifically at Cook County, Illinois, results show that the average rate of incarceration for Blacks is 51 percent, while the incarceration rate for whites is 38 percent.

From Loop 21:

“One of the authors of the study, University of Pennsylvania law professor David Abrams, says he doesn’t think that judges mean to put more black people in jail, but they should be made aware of the trend they are building.

‘No judge is likely to acknowledge, on his or her own, ‘Well, of course, I take race into account,’’ says Abrams. ‘And likely they don’t in any explicit way. But they probably do implicitly, because we take all kinds of things into account implicitly. And I think making judges aware of it could potentially help going forward.’”

Read more at Loop21.com

Is anyone really surprised by the results of this study?

Will we ever see equality in the criminal justice system?

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