In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Samantha Chapa, covers the new article by Allison P. Harris, Yale University, “Can Racial Diversity among Judges Affect Sentencing Outcomes?.”
In recent years, scholars have documented racial disparities across a wide range of outcomes, such as in health, education, and policing policy. One such outcome is criminal sentencing, where Black and Latino defendants often receive longer, and harsher sentences for similar crimes as compared to white defendants. What accounts for these sentencing disparities?
Scholars often intuitively argue that the race of the judge making decisions matters for criminal convictions. However, recent work finds that diversity across judges in entire criminal court systems is far more important than the race of individual judges alone. Allison P. Harris finds that courts with judges from fewer racial minority groups often have larger sentencing gaps between white and Black defendants. Rather than looking at individual-level judge characteristics as is often done, Harris analyzes diversity—or the racial composition of the group—at the court level in her novel approach. Using data from one of the largest court systems in the U.S., Harris finds evidence in support of her argument.
Harris argues that individual-level characteristics are insufficient in explaining differences in sentencing, as diversity is a “group-level” consideration. In other words, individuals alone cannot be diverse, but rather the characteristics of the community taken together create diversity. Community context, therefore, may matter more than an individual judge’s racial identification.
“She finds that as the Cook County court system employs more Black judges, the sentencing gaps between white and Black defendants decrease.”Harris provides several explanations for why diversity matters at the court level. First, she argues that increasing diversity can place pressure on white judges to appear less prejudiced. In other words, white judges may adjust their sentencing on non-white defendants to be more in line with white respondents to appear less discriminatory to their non-white colleagues. Second, she argues that interactions between white and Black judges may increase awareness of the salience of race in sentencing outcomes. For example, judges may attend training with their colleagues where discussions of racial sentencing disparities take place. Third, in interacting with colleagues from different racial groups, judges may update their beliefs about race and individuals of other racial groups. Judges may, simply put, become less biased because of exposure to their colleagues and their colleagues’ viewpoints.
Harris primarily analyzes the relationship between court diversity and racial gaps in sentencing outcomes by using 431,000 felony cases from 1995 to 2013 in Cook County, IL. She finds that as the Cook County court system employs more Black judges, the sentencing gaps between white and Black defendants decrease. Concretely, this means that as courts become more diverse, incarceration sentences for Black defendants usually decrease in frequency. White judges in particular become more lenient when it comes to sentencing Black defendants. Harris conducts a comparable analysis with data from the Harris County, TX criminal court system and finds similar results.
In Cook County alone, during 2020 8,667 individuals were convicted of felonies. If about 75 percent of those respondents were Black, increasing Black judges’ representation on the criminal court by just ten percentage points could mean that 195 more people would have their freedom. Though this study focuses specifically on Cook County, IL, the findings likely apply to large court systems throughout the country. Substantively, this means that increasing group diversity across courts can affect the lives, families, and communities of millions of Americans.
- Samantha Chapa is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Houston. Her National Science Foundation-funded research focuses broadly on the political rights and representation of migrants and people of color. Her dissertation examines the impacts of local, urban policies on immigrant and minoritized groups. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Politics and East European Politics and Societies. Prior to graduate school, she worked at BakerRipley—a non-profit—for three years, where she engaged in immigrant legal defense work. She completed her Bachelor’s in English and History at Rice University.
- Article details: HARRIS, ALLISON P. 2023. “Can Racial Diversity among Judges Affect Sentencing Outcomes?”. American Political Science Review
- About the APSA Public Scholarship Program.