Resources, Navigation, and Punishment in the Criminal Courts

• In Event: Cyber Matters and Courtroom Processing

Abstract

Researchers have long documented racial and socioeconomic disparities in criminal punishment. Existing explanations focus either on the factors that cause higher rates of arrest among certain groups or on differential treatment by criminal justice officials. This paper presents an underexplored explanation for disparities, namely criminal defendants’ differential abilities to navigate criminal justice institutions. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observations among a diverse sample of defendants in Massachusetts, this paper documents how defendants navigate court processing through their differential employment of criminal justice expertise, or knowledge and skills about evading criminal sanctions. A cultural resource, criminal justice expertise takes two forms: lawyers’ expertise, which is accrued in professional settings and employed through legitimated court processes, and defendants’ expertise, which is discredited in court settings and imprecisely cultivated through informal means. Findings reveal how defendants’ (mis)trust in the attorney-client relationship shapes whether defendants delegate authority to their lawyer’s expertise or reject such expertise in favor of their own, often resulting in disparate court outcomes along racial and class lines. These findings have implications for research on criminal justice disparities, legal consciousness, and the role of cultural resources in the reproduction of inequality.

Author

• Matthew Clair, Harvard University