Abstract
The papers in this special issue examine different aspects of the racial disproportionality in the various stages of the criminal justice system. Authors attribute the differences to different socioeconomic factors contributing to involvement in crime, different rates of arrest, more intensive police patrol patterns in minority neighborhoods, labeling as a result of early encounters with police, and inevitably racial discrimination. But that discrimination cannot account for more than a fraction of the disproportionality. Any such discrimination should be purged wherever possible, but major changes in the disproportionality will require larger changes in the general society outside the criminal justice system.
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According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of June 30, 2008, the incarceration rate per 100,000 population in state and federal prisons was 4,778 for black males and 727 for white males, resulting in a ratio of 6.6.
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Blumstein, A. Race and the Criminal Justice System. Race Soc Probl 1, 183–186 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-009-9022-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-009-9022-2