Ethnicity, legal resources, and felony dispositions in two southwestern jurisdictions

Latinos/as in the criminal and juvenile justice systems

“…The two non-capital punishment studies (LaFree 1985;Holmes et al 1996) suggest that discrimination among adult offenders is not limited to a particular or single stage. For instance, LaFree (1985) found that Latinos in El Paso, Texas (where most of the Latino/a population is Mexican) received less favorable pretrial release outcomes than Caucasians, were more likely to be convicted in jury trials, and received more severe sentences when they were found guilty by a trial jury.…”

Crime, Race and Ethnicity

“…Stereotypes of crimes and offenders are said to influence decisions at various stages of the processing of defendants (e.g., Steen et al, 2005). Another approach argues that economically and socially disadvantaged defendants have relatively limited access to legal resources (e.g., pretrial release), which indirectly influences final dispositions (e.g., Holmes et al, 1996). While research consistently demonstrates that legal considerations -notably offense severity and prior criminal record -influence defendants' outcomes, these perspectives explain how social characteristics such as ethnicity/race also may influence outcomes at various stages of case processing.…”

Let My People Go: Ethnic In-Group Bias in Judicial Decisions - Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment

“…The difficulty is that race and ethnicity are often correlated with other factors which have been found to significantly influence sentences, such as criminal record (Kleck, 1981), pretrial detention , unemployment (Chiricos and Bales, 1991), court appointed counseling (Holmes et al, 1996), crime type (Tonry¸ 1995), aggravated circumstances (Kleck, 1981) etc. ; and when these factors are controlled for, the independent effect of race loses all or most of its explanatory power in some of the studies.…”