Comparative (dis)advantage: Processing racial inequality in state and federal courts

• In Event: Understanding Guilty Pleas: Divergent Issues and Interesting Approaches in Plea and Case Processing Research

Abstract

While arrest and incarceration rates for drug defendants paint a highly racialized picture of drug enforcement, we know less about where and how racial inequality is reproduced within the criminal justice system. Moreover, the federalization of drug crime control, growing rapidly since the 1980s, has raised interesting questions about the discretion available to court actors in the enforcement and punishment of drug crimes. Miller and Eisenstein (2005) argue that the federal system generally has the "comparative advantage" compared to the state courts, including greater resources, higher rates of pretrial detention, looser evidentiary rules, longer criminal sentences, and more favorable asset-forfeiture laws. Contrasting court processing for drug defendants between the state and federal systems, I examine how early pre-sentencing decisions may act as racial stratification mechanisms for later stages. Drawing from literature on cumulative disadvantage, I use the State Court Processing Statistics and Federal Justice Statistics Program datasets to analyze unequal court processing and outcome decisions by racial group, as well as accounting for the effects of previous stages in later stages of the court process.

Author

• Marisa Omori, University of California, Irvine