How Research Can Help Eliminate Racial & Ethnic Disparities in Utah’s Criminal Justice System

Key-Takeaway

~ Informative research on racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system needs to encompass 3 items: 1) identify where disparities persists, 2) direct criminal justice professionals to policies and practices that are causing these disparities and 3) provide viable policy solutions to address them. ~

Why Prevention is Key

Preventing an individual from entering the criminal justice door is vital in lessening unnecessary and unfair incarceration. Barriers that are encountered once this door has been opened are costly both for the individuals themselves, and also for society. Among many things, these barriers include, reduced housing and employment opportunities, financial struggles, stigmatization, family and peer dissociation, and low self-esteem.¹

Current State of Disparity

Minority racial and ethnic groups continue to be over-represented in Utah’s criminal justice system. As we look at the prison system, the most severe point of contact, this over-representation is seen by their higher share of representation in the prison population versus their general population count (22 vs 36%).² In contrast, Whites are under-represented as seen by their lower share of representation at prison in relation to their general population count (78 vs 59%). Currently, other important criminal justice points of contact, including, at Arrest, Diversion, Jail (state-wide), and the Courts has insufficient data on race and ethnicity to be able to study representation at these points of contact.

The Link Between Socio-Economic Status and Incarceration

The link between race-ethnicity and socio-economic status is well researched. Decades of research has shown that many Minority racial and ethnic groups have reduced access to education and employment opportunities in comparison to Whites.³ These reduced opportunities are linked to lifelong differences in socio-economic status. Because some policies in our criminal justice system favors those with increased resources, socio-economic status is linked to a deepening criminal justice involvement. Furthermore, implicit and explicit biases continue to be important contributors to system-wide unfairness amongst individuals of color.⁴

Link to Data Source.

The Need to Examine Disparity at All Decision Points

While prevention is vital in eliminating unnecessary and unjust criminal justice involvement, evaluating existing policies and practices at each criminal justice decision point is important to ensure that disparities do not grow further as an individual moves through the system. For instance, let us say that there was disparity in the number of charges that the average, White and Minority individual had encountered prior to an important criminal justice decision point, then, as a system, we want to not only seek ways to understand and eliminate that disparity that existed a priori, but also make sure that further disparity do not happen at that particular decision point. It turns out that sound research and data can aid in this.

How Research Can Help: The Case for Quality Data & Research

Our criminal justice system is made of policies and practices that surrounds every criminal justice decision point. Research can help answer whether disparity exists at an individual decision point by targeting specifics around that point of contact. Researchers can then point policy makers and criminal justice professionals to specific areas that may have built-in biases that needs further examination. For instance, if we wanted to study racial and ethnic disparities at the point of Sentencing in Utah, then with informed research and quality data, we can study the factors that should determine an individual’s sentence to analyze whether all things equal, there are differences in Sentencing outcomes between groups. This is called making an “an apple-to apple” comparison. There may further be mitigating policies to consider for groups who have historically been discriminated against.

A Current Example of How Utah is Using Research to Drive Policy on Disparity

Informative research on racial and ethnic disparities needs to encompass 3 things. 1) identify where disparities persists, 2) direct criminal justice professionals to policies and practices that are causing these disparities and 3) provide viable policy solutions to address them. In a more recent study on racial and ethnic disparities around Utah’s pre-sentencing process published by the Utah Commission on Criminal & Juvenile Justice, researchers were able to identify 1) existing disparities in pre-sentencing outcomes and 2) provide guidance in how to target these disparities by examining the inputs of the Pre-Sentencing process.

~ By identifying and then directing system actors to specific factors that are contributing to these disparities, policy makers can target existing policies that benefit from change. ~

Eliminating Disparities at All Criminal Justice Decision Points

Continuing data collection and research are needed to inform on the effectiveness and fairness amongst our criminal justice policies. Only with this approach can we begin to create a path towards system-wide equity and fairness.

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1. Berson, S.B. 2013. Beyond the sentence — Understanding collateral consequences. NIJ Journal, 272: 24-28. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice↩

2. Prison data includes individuals held in Utah’s state prison as of June 2020. A small percent of Utah’s prisoners had a race-ethnicity categorized as “unknown”.↩

3. de Brey, C., Musu, L., McFarland, J., Wilkinson-Flicker, S., Diliberti, M., Zhang, A., Branstetter, C., and Wang, X. (2019). Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2018 (NCES 2019-038). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/.↩

4. Devine, P. G., Forscher, P. S., Austin, A. J., & Cox, W. T. (2012). Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention. Journal of experimental social psychology, 48(6), 1267–1278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.06.003↩