Do Blacks Get Longer Jail/Prison Sentences?
The website Law of Averages put together a collection of statewide studies on criminal sentencing for a large majority of the states. A few of the states with the smallest Black populations, they could not find any studies on this issue.
Study after study shows that Black are NOT given longer sentences than Whites. However, in some cases Black do get shorter sentences.
The North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission found no significant difference in the sentencing of Black and White males for the same crimes. However, they found that Black women were being sentenced to less time than White females for some categories.
The intersection of race and gender: an examination of sentencing outcomes in North Carolina (2014):
Black men were not uniformly disadvantaged, and Black women received the least severe treatment in two out of four analyses.
A University of Oklahoma graduate student researched sentencing in Oklahoma for his dissertation paper and found Whites were being sentenced more severely than Blacks. This was especially pronounced when comparing Black females to White females, and comparing sentences between Blacks and White for drug charges.
Legal and extra-legal variables in sentencing outcomes: The effect of race and gender (2003):
Judges and district attorneys are more likely to sentence whites to longer sentences than minority groups. While those differences are not significant for other groups…Blacks actually receive significantly shorter sentences than Whites.
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Black women in Oklahoma, controlling for the effects of the legal variables, received significantly shorter sentences than did white women. Other minority women—Hispanic or Native American—also received shorter sentences than white women, although the differences did not reach statistically significant levels.
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Finally, black males convicted of drug offenses were sentenced to about 12 months shorter sentences than were white males.
A study by the Department of Criminal Justice, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, found that Black male were receiving shorter jail sentences than White males, Latino males, and even White females! When it came to prison sentences, they found that young Blacks males were treated more leniently compared to young White males.
Compared to Black males, White males, Hispanic males, and White females received significantly longer jail sentences…It appears, therefore, that Black males and Black females received the shortest jail sentences.
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In the decision of prison length, the only significant difference was between young White and Black males, with White males receiving significantly longer prison sentences.
