Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Prosecution

Abstract

Unwarranted disparity taking place at the stage of prosecution has long been an interest for sentencing researchers. Research exploring the effect of offender race on prosecutorial decisions, however, has produced conflicting and inconclusive results. Some studies concluded that minority offenders faced more unfavorable outcomes than White offenders, whereas others found no significant impact of race/ethnicity in the prosecution process. Still others found a minority advantage. Given these inconsistencies, this research uses meta-analytic methodology to assess empirical findings from a body of scholarship that examined the relationship between race/ethnicity and prosecutorial outcomes. Analyses of homogeneity and moderator variables are also conducted to explore whether there are factors accounting for variability in effect sizes across studies. The result suggests that minority offenders face greater odds of being charged or fully prosecuted than White offenders. Moreover, several moderators, primarily methodologically relevant, account for variability across effect sizes.