Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites

Abstract

There are two criminal justice systems in America. In Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites, Mark Peffley and Jon Hurwitz provide the most comprehensive, groundbreaking account of these two perceptual worlds. Employing an original survey of both blacks and whites and a series of ingenious survey experiments, they find a cavernous gap in the experiences and beliefs of citizens when it comes to criminal justice. In fact, their analysis shows that the sources of this gap are different than previously assumed and their consequences more dire. Their study is especially important given that political scientists have been slow to pay attention to rising incarceration rates and that the criminal justice system has become an important site of government intervention in Americans' lives. Among blacks, there is deep and widespread doubt that agents and institutions of criminal justice will carry out justice in a racially neutral and fair way. Blacks are not only most worried about being victimized themselves, but also worried about being unfairly targeted and harshly treated by the very system that is supposed to protect them from crime. This paradox means that they are “simultaneously the most dependent upon and the most distrustful of the justice system” (p. 15). Blacks are much more likely than whites—on the order of 40 points—to believe accusations of discriminatory police stops of blacks, courts’ harsher sentences for blacks, and lack of care for crimes against minorities. Whites, in contrast, are largely unaware of racial discrimination against minorities in the criminal justice system. In addition, the races “could not be more polarized” in their beliefs about why more black men wind up in jail; whites are much more likely to see blacks themselves as responsible for their disadvantaged status in the criminal justice system, attributing the reason for disproportionate black incarceration to blacks’ criminality and lack of respect for authority rather than to an unfair justice system. Blacks are also much more likely to report having had an involuntary personal encounter with the police and much more likely to report being stopped without reason and mistreated in these encounters.