Black Lives Matter in the Courtroom: Judges, Discretion, and Responsiveness to Protest

• In Event: Justice and Injustice: Political Science Perspectives on Crime and Punishment Mini-Conference: The Electoral Connection: Democratic Control of Criminal Justice Elites

Abstract

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has drawn public attention to racial disparities in
exposure to, and treatment by, the criminal justice system. BLM protests have spurred public
conversations as well as positiontaking
by elected officials. But have they also led to changes in
courtroom behavior? Judges in state court systems often have some discretion over conviction
and sentencing; we ask whether judges used this discretion to reduce racial sentencing disparities
(or sentence length overall) in the wake of BLM protests. We use several years of sentencing
data from one large state district court system to test whether sentencing behavior shifted after
major waves of BLM protest. Preliminary results indicate that judges’ behavior changed after the
protests, suggesting another avenue by which protest could influence public policy.

Authors

• Allison P. Harris, Yale University

• Shom Mazumder, Harvard University

• Ariel Rebecca White, MIT