The Color of Justice 5th Edition by Samuel Walker,Cassia Spohn,Miriam DeLone

Exercise 1

What does this chapter offer in terms of resolving the issue of whether African Americans have differentially high offending rates compared to whites, or that African Americans are subject to differentially high processing rates (possibly discriminatory) by the criminal justice system? What must a researcher do to advance a description of disparity to an argument of discrimination (hint: causation)? In the case of prison populations, how do you advance from the demographic description of the overrepresentation of African Americans in prison to a causal analysis of discrimination by the criminal justice system? In the case of the demographic makeup of the probation population (less racial disparity than jail and prison) does this reflect sentencing discrimination, thus saving the more favorable sentences for whites? Or is the presence of less extreme disparity, which is similar to the disparities in arrest figures (see Chapter 2)-a balancing out of discrimination?