Edited by Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, Bruce Western, Yamrot Negussie, and Emily Backes, eds.

Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice, and Policy synthesizes the evidence on community-based solutions, noncriminal policy interventions, and criminal justice reforms, charting a path toward the reduction of racial inequalities by minimizing harm in ways that also improve community safety. Reversing the effects of structural racism and severing the close connections between racial inequality, criminal harms such as violence, and criminal justice involvement will involve fostering local innovation and evaluation, and coordinating local initiatives with state and federal leadership. This report also highlights the challenge of creating an accurate, national picture of racial inequality in crime and justice: there is a lack of consistent, reliable data, as well as data transparency and accountability. While the available data points toward trends that Black, Latino, and Native American individuals are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and given more severe punishments compared to White individuals, opportunities for improving research should be explored to better inform decision-making.

Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2022.

By R.R. Dunlea, Besiki Luka Kutateladze. Melba Pearson. Don Stemen and Lin Liu (Prosecutorial Performance Indicators)

This report measures the scope and magnitude of racial and ethnic disparities in prosecutorial outcomes in the Broward State Attorney’s Office, Florida, during 2021. The data suggest that, compared to Hispanic and White defendants, Black defendants are: • Least likely to have their case filed for prosecution, especially for felony charges; • Most likely to have their top charge reduced in severity at filing, as well as increased in severity; • Most likely to have their case dismissed, whether charged with a felony or a misdemeanor; • Least likely to have their felony charge reduced after filing; and • Most likely to receive custodial and time-served-only sentences upon conviction, as compared to non-custodial sentences. • Especially more likely to receive custodial sentences than White defendants in negotiated pleas, as compared to open pleas. Compared to similarly situated Black and White defendants, Hispanic defendants are: • Least likely to experience charge changes at filing; • Most likely to have their case pursued for prosecution; • Most likely to have their felony charges reduced at disposition; and • Least likely to receive jail and prison sentences upon conviction.

Miami: Florida International University, 2022. 27p.

By JustLeadership USA and the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (APA)

JustLeadership USA and the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (APA) released a new report, Building the Table: Advancing Race Equity in the Criminal Legal System, which provides a historic roadmap of strategies to advance race equity in the criminal legal system.

The report’s findings are the result of an unprecedented convening between representatives from all components of the justice system alongside community members, in particular those with lived experience, their families, and survivors of crime. This collaboration builds a foundation for policies that will successfully advance race equity, improve our approach to justice, and promote community safety and well-being.

“As people who are directly impacted and hurt by the criminal legal system, it is extremely important that our voices and leadership are a core part of any transformation that impacts our lives and those of our communities,” said DeAnna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA. “True authentic engagement is more than seeking our support at the end of systematic redesign, it occurs when the concepts of reimagining are led by those most affected, because our experience is our expertise. Our leadership as we ‘Build the Table’ is critical to advancing race equity and improving the system’s capacity to administer justice and promote community safety and well-being.”

This report and initiative were made possible through the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the efforts of those who volunteered their time and insights to produce this document.

“As we strive to advance racial and ethnic equity in the criminal justice system, it is critical that we elevate the leadership role of people with lived experience to ensure that their first-hand perspectives shape the creation of effective and meaningful solutions,” said Laurie Garduque, director of criminal justice at the MacArthur Foundation. “This report offers a framework for communities looking to advance community safety and wellbeing, and it starts with authentic community engagement and acknowledging the expertise of people with lived experience.”

This report is intended to equip federal, state and local legal system stakeholders to pursue new approaches to building stronger relationships with communities and the broader legal system. This consensus contains a unified statement of principles, policies and practical guidance to advance race equity in the criminal legal system, as well as recent real-world examples of policies and practices implemented by a variety of system stakeholders and community organizations throughout the country.

Washington, DC: Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, 2023. 27p.

By Mari McGilton and Sabrina Rizk

Pressure to identify and reduce disparities through policy has risen in recent years, but these priorities are neither new nor easily achieved. Most studies of these disparities are siloed from each other and are limited to a single outcome measure, comparison group, and/or comparison time point, meaning policymakers end up relying on incomplete information to make critical decisions. This is especially true for federal and state sentencing decision-makers, who are bound by policies made across multiple agencies. Federal sentencing decision-makers specifically are driven by US attorney general directives, legislative policies, Supreme Court rulings, and amendments to the US federal sentencing guidelines. These policies affect several decision-makers at different stages in the federal sentencing process (e.g., attorneys’ application of mandatory minimum statutes, federal probation officers’ determination of final offense level, federal judges’ sentencing decisions). Most studies on disparities at the federal sentencing stage of the criminal legal system investigate only racial disparities in sentencing decisions, such as in/out decisions (i.e., prison/no prison), and/or sentence lengths, and evaluate changes in these disparities based on predetermined points in time from predetermined policies assumed to have impacted those changes. Although these studies provide critical information on disparities in federal sentencing, we could expand our knowledge and the methods used. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, we sought to answer three key research questions: 1. Do racial disparities vary across three stages of federal sentencing and over time? If so, how? 2. During which years do the measured racial disparities have a statistically significant decrease? 3. Which policies likely impacted these decreases the most? What are the commonalities between them?

Washington DC: Urban Institute, 2023. 53p.

By Alexandra Cox

There are stark racial and ethnic disparities which exist at all levels of the English and Welsh criminal justice systems (Lammy, 2017, Sveinsson, 2012, Chada, 2020). These disparities exist at the front end of the system in terms of the racially and ethnically disproportionate impact of stop and search; the racialised placement of individuals on police databases such as the Metropolitan Police’s Gangs Matrix; decision-making by magistrates and judges; and the barriers that people of colour face in accessing the legal profession, and, in particular, the judiciary (Williams and Clarke, 2016, Fatsis, 2019, Densley and Pyrooz, 2019, Centre for Justice Innovation, 2017, Gibbs and Kirby, 2014, The Law Society, 2020b).1 Defence practitioners can offer vital insights about criminal justice system practices as they are court ‘insiders’, with unprecedented access to legal procedures, negotiations, and practices, as well as access to legal cultures and cultural codes which are inherently racialised. They also have valuable knowledge about their clients’ lives and experiences in the system. However, this knowledge is rarely harnessed, despite the ways that it can be brought to bear in support of better outcomes for clients. Frontline legal practitioners also offer perspectives on the legitimacy of the justice system, both as individuals who have their own experiences of injustice, but also through an understanding of their clients’ experiences. There has been very little research on defence practitioners’ perceptions of the fairness of the criminal justice system landscape in England and Wales. Much of the research on defence practitioners has focused on the relationships that are established between practitioners and their clients and the role of trust in those relationships, and has been almost exclusively conducted in the United States (Flemming, 1986, Boccaccini et al., 2004, Sandys and Pruss, 2017, Campbell et al., 2015, Clair, 2020). There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the experiences of lawyers of colour in the justice system in England and Wales are shaped by the dynamics of race, class and gender (Wilson, 2020, Johnson, 2020), and that their perspectives provide valuable insights into the working practices of the courts, but there is very little research evidence about these perspectives.

London: Howard League for Penal Reform, 2023. 11p.

By Eric Kaufmann

Recent data show racist attitudes and behaviors in the U.S. are on the decline; so why do Americans believe that our country is becoming progressively more racist? By analyzing a wide variety of scholarship and data sources—including original surveys of his own—Manhattan Institute’s (MI) adjunct fellow,  Eric Kaufmann, suggests that an important part of the reported experience of racism is ideologically malleable. But ideology, though arguably the largest factor, is only partially at fault for spreading the false narrative of growing racism. Partisanship, social media, and education have also inclined Americans to “see” more bigotry and racial prejudice than they previously did.  

In his new report, “The Social Construction of Racism in the United States,” Kaufmann finds that the solution to the public’s misinformed perception is to recognize first, that racism has been amplified by ideological and media construction; and second, that it is partly in the eye of the beholder.  

Across a range of surveys Kaufmann finds that:  

Ideology—and, to a lesser degree, social media exposure and university education—has heightened people’s perceptions of racism.

Depression and anxiety are linked to perceiving more racism.

The level of racism in society reported by whites appears to be driven more by political leaning than the level reported by blacks.

Liberal whites are more supportive of punitive Critical Race Theory (CRT) postulates than blacks, who aspire to agency and resilience.

CRT appears to have a detrimental effect on African-Americans’ feeling of being in control of their lives.

As much as half of reported racism may be ideologically or psychologically conditioned, and the rise in the proportion of Americans claiming racism to be an important problem is largely socially constructed. 

None of this means that racism has been eradicated, but the policy approaches that Kaufmann suggests diverge from those based on the narrative of “systemic” racism that is increasingly prevalent in professional settings. Rather than use shaming or punitive and virtue-signaling measures like CRT, Kaufmann suggests using race-neutral, less contentious initiatives like mentoring, nudges such as name=-blind CVs, and randomized control trials to ascertain which interventions work. 

As Kaufmann discusses, the dangers in overstating the presence of racism go well beyond majority resentment and polarization. A media-generated narrative about systemic racism distorts people’s perceptions of reality and may even damage African-Americans’ sense of control over their lives. While it is difficult to totally rid our society of racism, a change in our perception of it would benefit both our local communities and national social fabric. 

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2021. 32p.

Paula A. Braveman, Elaine Arkin, Dwayne Proctor, Tina Kauh, and Nicole Holm

Racism is not always conscious, explicit, or readily visible— often it is systemic and structural. Systemic and structural racism are forms of racism that are pervasively and deeply embedded in systems, laws, written or unwritten policies, and entrenched practices and beliefs that produce, condone, and perpetuate widespread unfair treatment and oppression of people of color, with adverse health consequences. Examples include residential segregation, unfair lending practices and other barriers to home ownership and accumulating wealth, schools’ dependence on local property taxes, environmental injustice, biased policing and sentencing of men and boys of color, and voter suppression policies. This article defines systemic and structural racism, using examples; explains how they damage health through many causal pathways; and suggests approaches to dismantling them. Because systemic and structural racism permeate all sectors and areas, addressing them will require mutually reinforcing actions in multiple sectors and places; acknowledging their existence is a crucial first step.

February 2022 41:2 Health Affairs

By Sanjiv Lingayah

A new report by Dr Sanjiv Lingayah and ROTA shines a light on systemic racism. It takes a system provides a clear definition of this slippery concept and outlines an agenda for dismantling systemic racism. This includes creative efforts to bring to life how systems function as well as the development, by advocates and activists, of blueprints to show what a system that centres racial and other justice looks like.

Finally, to move towards a system that advances racial justice, we need proper funding for both the ‘fast’ work to deal with the crises of racial injustice and the ‘slow’ work of addressing systemic causes.

London: Beyond Race/Race on the Agenda , 2021. 20p.

By The Anti-Defamation League, Center on Extremism

This report examines the extremist and antisemitic trends and incidents in the state of Florida from 2020 to the present. The past two years have seen a significant increase in extremist related incidents both nationwide and in the state of Florida. These incidents have been driven, in part, by widespread disinformation and conspiracy theories which have animated extremists and fueled antisemitism. The result: unrest and violence, from the January 6 insurrection to white supremacist activity to a spike in hate crimes. In Florida, new white supremacist groups have formed, including White Lives Matter, Sunshine State Nationalists, NatSoc Florida and Florida Nationalists, while existing neo-Nazi and accelerationist groups have broadened their audience both online and on the ground activities. Other extremist groups such as Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have shifted their strategies to focus on the local level, disrupting school board meetings and even running for political office.

New York: ADL, 2022. 46p.

By Libby Hemphill

Social media platforms provide fertile ground for white supremacist networks, enabling farright extremists to find one another, recruit and radicalize new members, and normalize their hate. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter use content matching and machine learning to recognize and remove prohibited speech, but to do so, they must be able to recognize white supremacist speech and agree that it should be prohibited. Critics in the press1 and advocacy organizations still argue that social media companies haven’t been aggressive or broad enough in removing prohibited content. There is little public conversation, however, about what white supremacist speech looks like and whether white supremacists adapt or moderate their speech to avoid detection. Our team of researchers set out to better understand what constitutes English-language white supremacist speech online and how it differs from general or non-extremist speech. We also sought to determine whether and how white supremacists adapt their speech to avoid detection. We used computational methods to analyze existing sets of known white supremacist speech (text only) and compared those speech patterns to general or non-extremist samples of online speech. Prior work confirms that extremists use social media to connect and radicalize, and they use specific linguistic markers to signal their group membership. We sampled data from users of the white nationalist website Stormfront and a network of “alt-right” users on Twitter. Then, we compared their posts to typical, non-extremist Reddit comments.* We found that platforms often miss discussions of conspiracy theories about white genocide and Jewish power and malicious grievances against Jews and people of color. Platforms also let decorous but defamatory speech persist. With all their resources, platforms could do better. With all their power and influence, platforms should do better.

New York: ADL, 2022. 66p.

By Anti-Defamation League Center for Technology and Society

How safe are social media platforms now? Throughout 2020 and early 2021, major technology companies announced that they were taking unprecedented action against the hate speech, harassment, misinformation and conspiracy theories that had long flourished on their platforms. According to the latest results from ADL’s annual survey of hate and harassment on social media, despite the seeming blitz of self-regulation from technology companies, the level of online hate and harassment reported by users barely shifted when compared to reports from a year ago. This is the third consecutive year ADL has conducted its nationally representative survey. Forty-one percent of Americans said they had experienced online harassment over the past year, comparable to the 44% reported in last year’s “Online Hate and Harassment” report. Severe online harassment comprising sexual harassment, stalking, physical threats, swatting, doxing and sustained harassment also remained relatively constant compared to the prior year, experienced by 27% of respondents, not a significant change from the 28% reported in the previous survey. ● LGBTQ+ respondents reported higher rates of overall harassment than all other demographics for the third consecutive year, at 64%. ● 36% of Jewish respondents experienced online harassment, comparable to 33% the previous year. ● Asian-American respondents have experienced the largest single year-over-year rise in severe online harassment in comparison to other groups, with 17% reporting it this year compared to 11% last year. This year, fewer respondents who experienced physical threats reported them to social media platforms than was the case the year before; these users also reported that platforms were doing less to address their safety. ● 41% of respondents who experienced a physical threat stated that the platform took no action on a threatening post, ● comparable to the 38% who had reported a similar lack of action the year before. ● 38% said they did not flag the threatening post to the platform, no statistically significant change from 33% the prior year. ● Only 14% of those who experienced a physical threat said the platform deleted the threatening content, a significant drop from 22% the prior year. ● Just 17% of those who experienced a physical threat stated that the platform blocked the perpetrator who posted the content, a sharp decrease from the prior year’s 28%.

New York: ADL, 2021. 46p.

By U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Massachusetts Advisory Committee

Hate crimes and harassment targeting Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders surged during the pandemic, demanding action, and on May 21, 2021, President Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. Memorializing the women murdered in attacks on Atlanta massage parlors, the Act focuses partly on improving reporting, data collection, and prevention and education at the federal and state level. Its strong bi-partisan support was a welcome acknowledgment of the dangers confronted daily by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. As press reports have made clear, a recent spate of violent attacks have made some people, especially the elderly, fearful of venturing outside. How distressing, if not dangerous, is daily life for them? Harassment and hate-fueled acts are difficult to count, even when they might constitute crimes or civil offenses, since accurate data requires self-reporting. Still the numbers indicate a worrisome trend: Between March 2020 and March 2021, Stop AAPI Hate compiled some 6600 reports of hate incidents; the Public Policy Institute of California survey found that one in eight Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders reported being targeted by hate incidents in 2020, amounting to about 2 million people. But AntiAsian hate incidents in Massachusetts were increasing disproportionately before the pandemic, starting in 2015. For many people in the AAPI community, hate crimes and harassment are inescapable parts of daily life. In addition to being targeted by racist taunting and slurs, people report being threatened, assaulted, and having garbage thrown at them. In Massachusetts, AAPI identifies residents numbering over 450,000. People of Chinese descent constitute the largest sub-group, followed by refugees -- Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, and Hmong. Many are underserved and vulnerable to hate crimes and harassment. Current data shows a 47 percent increase in anti-AAPI hate crimes in Massachusetts between 2015 and 2020, while total hate crimes have increased only 2 percent over the same period.

Washington, DC: The Commission, 2021. 23p.

By Rachel Kowert, Austin Botelho and Alex Newhouse

The online game Minecraft, owned by Microsoft, has amassed 141 million active users since it was launched in 2011. It is used in school communities, among friend groups and even has been employed by the U.N. Despite its ubiquity as an online space, little has been reported on how hate and harassment manifest in Minecraft, as well as how it performs content moderation. To fill this research gap, Take This, ADL and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, in collaboration with GamerSafer, analyzed hate and harassment in Minecraft based on anonymized data from January 1st to March 30th, 2022 consensually provided from three private Minecraft servers (no other data was gathered from the servers except the anonymized chat and report logs used in this study). While this analysis is not representative of how all Minecraft spaces function, it is a crucial step in understanding how important online gaming spaces operate, the form that hate takes in these spaces, and whether content moderation can mitigate hate.

New York: Anti-Defamation League Center for Technology and Society, 2022. 20p.

By Susan Nembhard and Lily Robin

Differential treatment on the basis of race is well documented in the US criminal legal system. Definitions of criminality and criminal activity are rooted in structural inequalities between people of color and white people, and racist policies and practices have been used to control and separate communities of color. In addition, discretion given to individual system actors at each decision point in the system creates opportunities for racial biases to influence practices toward and outcomes for system-involved people. Racial biases are so deeply embedded in the criminal legal system that disparities based on race exist at each decision point, impacting subsequent decision points and resulting in negative outcomes for Black people and other people of color. It is imperative that researchers approach their work with an understanding of how racist policies and implicit biases interact within and throughout different aspects of the criminal legal system if they want to identify and promulgate more equitable policies and research.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2021. 14o,

By Charlene Collazo Goldfield, Gabriela Chambi and Amanda Torres

Statistics show that policing disproportionately affects communities of color; police are more likely to use force against Black and brown people. Data from non-violent encounters (e.g., reason for the stop, type of force used, and presence of witnesses) is rarely collected or disregarded altogether. Video evidence can publicize police violence. Bystander video during George Floyd’s murder led to arrests and a global racial reckoning because it depicted the reality of police encounters for people of color. Although technological advancements have led to positive developments for civilian safety (e.g., body cameras and in-car videos), data collection consistency and accountability are barriers to progress. Can society benefit from innovative yet simple tools to promote safety and accountability during police encounters? Our phone application aims to support social justice and safe policing by focusing on consistent and efficient data collection. Our goals with this paper are to: (1) lay out existing policing data collection practices and current issues involving tech and policing; (2) explain and distinguish our app’s functionality; (3) describe the importance of public and private partnerships; (4) examine potential privacy and data limitations; and (5) summarize how our app can magnify law enforcement accountability and reduce race-based policing.

Unpublished paper, 2021. American University Washington College of Law

By Naomi Murakawa

Racial innocence is the practice of securing blamelessness for the death-dealing realities of racial capitalism. This article reviews the legal, social scientific, and reformist mechanisms that maintain the racial innocence of one particular site: the US carceral state. With its routine dehumanization, violence, and stunning levels of racial disparity, the carceral state should be a hard test case for the willful unknowing of obvious devastation. Nonetheless, the law presumes “no racism,” condones racial profiling, and interprets racial disparity in policing and imprisonment as evidence of true racial difference in criminality, not discrimination. Prominent social science research too often mimics these practices, producing research that aids in the collective erasure of racism.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2019. 15:473–93

By Desmond Ang

This paper documents the impact of popular media on racial hate by examining the first American blockbuster: 1915’s The Birth of a Nation, a fictional portrayal of the KKK’s founding rife with racist stereotypes. Exploiting the film’s five-year “roadshow”, I find a sharp spike in lynchings and race riots coinciding with its arrival in a county. Instrumenting for roadshow destinations using the location of theaters prior to the movie’s release, I show that the film significantly increased local Klan support in the 1920s. Roadshow counties continue to experience higher rates of hate crimes and hate groups a century later.

HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP20-038, November 2020 (Updated July 2022)

By Amy Farrell and Sarah Lockwood

Hate crimes, often referred to as bias-motivated crimes, have garnered greater public attention and concern as political rhetoric in the United States and internationally has promoted the exclusion of people based on their group identity. This review examines what we know about the trends in hate crime behavior and the legal responses to this problem across four main domains. First, we describe the legal framework and recent attempts to expand hate crime protections beyond historically disenfranchised groups. Second, we examine recent trends and patterns of hate crime victimization. Third, we review what is known about those who perpetrate hate crimes and those who experience hate crime victimization. Finally, we examine the efficacy of efforts to respond to and prevent hate crime. This review examines a wide range of bias-motivated harms and suggests how future research and policy can be more inclusive of victimization extending beyond traditionally understood hate crimes.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2023. 6:107–30

By Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska, Marharyta Zhesko

The Analysis includes in depth review of the case-law of the European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR), in regards to hate speech and hate crimes. Considering the ever-growing jurisprudence of the ECtHR in this area, it looks into the most significant and impactful decisions and the recent landmark judgments on the topics.

Vienna: Austria: OSCE, 2021. 108p.

By The Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry.at Tel Aviv University,

The Antisemitism Worldwide Report for 2022 informs of both increases and decreases, some more meaningful than others, in the number of antisemitic incidents in different countries. The United States, where the largest Jewish minority in the world lives, saw a particularly alarming rise in anti-Jewish violence and slander. These data are not encouraging. The record-levels of 2021 were attributed in part to the exceptional social tensions created by the Covid-19 epidemic and the political tensions created by the Guardian of the Walls operation in Gaza. The data for 2022 suggest that the motivations for present-day antisemitism are not transient as some may have hoped. Despite the investment of substantial legal, educational, and political efforts, thousands of antisemitic incidents took place across the globe in 2022, including hundreds of physical assaults. Everyone who cares about human dignity and justice must recognize the need to prevent this reality from becoming normalized. Antisemitic incidents are not an abstract phenomenon. Whether physical or virtual, they affect real people in the real world. As with other hate crimes, fighting them requires a combination of broadly applied agendas along with tailor-made, targeted initiatives. It requires establishing who is attacked, who are the attackers, where the attacks occur, and what motivates the offenders. These questions must be treated with great caution and sensitivity. But they cannot be ignored if we are to achieve results. This year’s Report examines the location and affiliations of victims of antisemitic physical assaults in several cities that were major theatres for such incidents (p. 23). Our comparative study suggests physical attacks tend to occur in specific areas in major urban centers on streets and public transportation (rather than in or outside synagogues); usually do not appear to be premeditated; and target in the vast majority of cases visibly-identifiable Jews, particularly ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews. Whether attackers are motivated by strong antisemitic sentiments, by hatred of Israel (which, ironically, in some cases preys on anti-Zionist Jews), or by a bullying impulse that targets those who appear most different and vulnerable, their offenses fall under the category of antisemitic hate crimes.

New York: Anti-Defamation League; The Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry.at Tel Aviv University, 2023. 86p.