A Plea for Justice: Racial Disparities in Pretrial Decision Making

• In Event: Plea Bargains and Extralegal Factors That Influence Them

Abstract

African American defendants are more likely than Whites to be detained pretrial and to receive a prison sentence through plea bargaining. Implicit bias (unconscious attitudes and stereotypes about race) appears to be a factor in racial disparities in other areas of the justice system, but prior research has not examined whether implicit bias is a factor in prosecutors’ pretrial decisions (i.e., charging, setting bail, and plea bargaining). This study will measure implicit bias, dehumanization bias (an unconscious bias in which people conceive of African Americans as less than human), and explicit racial attitudes to assess the influence of each on pretrial decisions. Research questions are: (1) Are racial implicit bias, dehumanization bias, and/or explicit racial attitudes positively associated with racial disparities in pretrial decision making? (2) What are the relative influences of racial implicit bias, dehumanization bias, and explicit racial attitudes? Students from the UCLA School of Law (n = ~200) will read a criminal case vignette containing either an African American or White defendant and then respond with a charge for the defendant, a bail amount, and a plea bargain sentence. Regression analysis will be used to test the association between the implicit/explicit bias measures and the pretrial decisions.

Author

• Matthew L. Mizel, UCLA