Policies, not bad apples, behind racial disparities in US jail: study

NEW YORK - Long-standing policies and deeply rooted inequity, rather than a few "bad apples" in the criminal justice system, likely explain why Black defendants in certain parts of the country are more likely than others to be held in jail before trial, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.

"But a relatively easy fix could be a key to undoing those racial disparities in pretrial detention," said the university on its website on Wednesday, quoting Jennifer Skeem, its professor of public policy and social welfare, as saying that "we rely on pretrial detention much too often, and there are huge human and fiscal costs."

A pair of recently published papers suggest that an overreliance on a defendant's criminal history has inflated the number of people sitting behind bars while their cases grind through the courts, noted the report.

Black defendants were 34 percent more likely to be recommended to be held behind bars until their cases were resolved, researchers found. Racial biases on the part of the officers writing the reports contributed to some of the disparities -- particularly in cases that involved a lot of discretion, like when the defendants had little or no criminal record, said the report.

"The vast majority of the racial disparity in detention recommendations operated through pretrial policies and guidelines, which are part of what Skeem called 'institutionalized factors' that officers were instructed to consider," it added.