Racial and Ethnic Disparity and Criminal Justice: How Much is Too Much?

Abstract

Race differences in criminal involvement and racial patterns in the criminal justice system have been important topics since the beginning of American criminology. The question of whether there are meaningful racial disparities in the justice system has been important since the 1960s. In recent decades, a considerable literature focused on racial profiling by police and racial differences in imprisonment, sentencing, and other areas of criminal and juvenile justice processing has grown. There are both studies that report no significant racial differences in criminal justice processing and studies that report substantial differences. Taken together, how meaningful are observed differences? Wilbanks concludes that they are not. He maintains that even in the studies that report statistically significant racial differences in criminal justice outcomes, the effect sizes are too small to really matter. In other words, Wilbanks argues that these