WHAT INSTITUTIONAL RACISM?:

The United States puts more people in prison than any other country in the world, and Black and Latinx individuals are disproportionately incarcerated and for longer. In new research which examines over 500,000 people admitted to state prisons through county courts,  Katherine A. Durante finds that Black and Latinx individuals are sentenced, on average, for longer than White individuals, and that Black individuals are sentenced more harshly as the percentage of voters for Donald Trump in a county increases. These findings, she writes, raise questions of bias and unequal justice in the US justice system. 

Black and Latinx individuals, respectively, are incarcerated in state prisons at 5.1x and 1.4x the rate of White individuals in the United States. One driver of disparity is that they are often sentenced longer than their White counterparts. However, this is not true in all jurisdictions across the US; some county courts are especially prone to racial and ethnic disparities in punishment. For example, courts located in counties with larger shares of Republican voters sentence Black individuals longer than White individuals convicted of similar crimes.

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