Racial Bias in the Legal System
Systemic disproportionality in case outcomes for Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples is a reality of the legal system. The resources and tools compiled here are intended to provide attorneys with information that will strengthen their advocacy for their clients.
Resources from OPD and Partner Organizations
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Disparity in Conviction, Sentencing, and Charging
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- Equity Dashboard (American Equity & Justice Group)
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Fair Cross Section in the Jury Venire
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- ZIP Code Mapping Tool (OPD & WaTech GIS: Architecture and Innovation Division)
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Maps
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Incarceration Sites in Washington
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WSBA Council on Public Defense Race Equity Subcommittee BIPOC Forum
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- BIPOC Forum Project Tracker [EXCEL]
- About the Data Visualizations [PDF]
Bias and Discrimination in the Legal System
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Antiracist Guidance and Resources
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- Well Minds Psychiatry & Consulting- How to support victims of racism and how to become anti-racist [PDF]
- Racism is a Public Health Crisis: Map of Declarations by State
- Anti-Racism Resource List [PDF]
- Toolkit for Navigating Difficult Conversations Related to Anti-Racism [PDF]
- I Want a Black Lawyer to Represent Me [PDF]
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Cash Bail Disparity Experienced by Black and Brown Populations
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Child Welfare Advocacy and Cultural Humility
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- Resources for Youth Defenders on Challenging Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality
- 2024 KIDS COUNT Data Book (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2024)
- Foster Care Statistics
- Racial Disparities Plague Foster Care in America
- Family Surveillance: Police and the Reporting of Child Abuse and Neglect (2019)
- The Cumulative Prevalence of Termination of Parental Rights
- Competency vs. Humility [Video]
- Nurturing Resilience & Joy in/among Young BIPOC Children [Video]
- DCYF Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice
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Collecting Fines and Fees
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Addressing Racial Epithets in Cases
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- Jurors Use of the n-word Supreme Court divided
- Racial Epithets in the Criminal Process [PDF]
- Addressing Race at Trial [PDF] (Defenders Manual, University of North Carolina, 2014)
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Adultification Bias Resources
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- Girlhood Interrupted by Georgetown Center [PDF]
- School to Prison Pipeline
- Snapshot on the State of Black Women and Girls: Sex Trafficking in the U.S. [PDF]
- Personal Restraint Petition of Asaria Justice Miller
- Criminalization and Black Girl Mental Health
- Disrupting the Impacts of Implicit Bias in Schools
- Race and Gender Adultification Bias
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Bias
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Alleging Bias
- State v. Bagby
- Implicit Racial Biases in Prosecutorial Summations: Proposing an Integrated Response [PDF]
- State v Cristian Alexander Quijas [PDF]
- State v. Monday, Prosecutor and Racial Bias [PDF]
- State v. Andre Devoun McKenzie [PDF]
- State v. Zamora [PDF]
- Henderson v. Thompson October 2022
- Race and Juvenile Justice Decision Making
- Police Hurt Thousands of Teens — Many Are Black Girls | The Marshall Project
- Confronting Unconscious Racism in Jury Selection
- DMCJA SCJA Racial Justice Commitment- March 25, 2021 [PDF]
- State v. Ellis Div II Unpublished Opinion [PDF]
- The Science of Justice: Seattle PD [PDF] (National Justice Database City Report, 2021)
- Seattle Police Department Terry Stop Data
- State v. Horntvedt
Bias and Mental Health
- Understanding Mental Health Disparities
- African American CRDP Population Report [PDF]
- Asian and Pacific Islander CRDP Population Report [PDF]
- Latino CRDP Population Report [PDF]
- LGBTQ CRDP Population Report [PDF]
- Native American CRDP Population Report [PDF]
Implicit Bias
- Implicit Bias Resources [PDF]
- Implicit Association Test
- The Bias Beneath Measuring Implicit Association
- White Anti-racism: Living the Legacy (Southern Poverty Law Center Learning for Justice)
- Center for Antiracist Research
- Anti-Racism Resource Library
Machine Bias (Risk Assessment Tools)
- Software Used to Predict Future Activity, Biased Against Blacks
- Recidivism and Disparity in Risk Scores
Witness Bias
- State v. Tate [PDF]
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Bias, Judges and Courts
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- Seattle Times Article: WA Supreme Court 'We're not colorblind'
- Statistics on the gender and racial diversity of Article III Courts
- State Supreme Court Diversity 2024 (The Brennan Center for Justice, 2024)
- State Supreme Courts Don't Match America's Diversity
- Lens of Implicit Bias
- Diversity Impacts How Cases Are Decided
- Abstract of fairness risk in sentencing relatively poor defendants
- Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles
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Covid-19
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COVID-19 Greater Health Risk and Hardship on Black and Brown Incarcerated
- DOH data, COVID-19 Morbidity and Mortality by Race, Ethnicity and Language in Washington State [PDF]
- Covid-19 Greater Health Risks for Black and Brown Incarcerated
- State-by-State Data
COVID-19 In and Out of Court Challenges
COVID-19 and Pandemic Impacts on Black and Brown Populations
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Data Toolbox
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- Detailed Data Tool (The Sentencing Project)
- Prison Policy Initiative
- Quick Facts Washington Demographic Statistics for Counties
- 2020 Census Data Releases (Washington State Office of Financial Management)
- Black Population by County Map Visual
- Registered Voters by County and Age Group WA SOS
- Demographics of Repeat Arrests (Prison Policy Initiative, 2019)
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- 42% of people arrested and booked 3 or more times were Black.
- About half (50%) of those most frequently arrested had annual incomes below $10,000 and 85% had incomes below $20,000.
- Educational attainment was lowest among people with 3 or more arrests in a year. Three-quarters (74%) had a high school education or less — with 38% without a high school diploma.
- Washington Statistical Analysis Center
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Demographics of Power
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- Demographics of Power- America's Sheriffs [PDF]
- Washington Data on Police Stops 2005-2018
- December 2020 Report Contacts Between the Police and Public Statistics [PDF]
- Pierce County Sherriff's Department Use of Force (Pierce County, 2023)
- Seattle Times 2021 11 17 Pierce County deputies disproportionately use force [PDF]
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Epistemic Injustice
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- On Epistemic Appropriation
- Epistemic Injustice in Utterance Interpretation (Synthese)
- Offending White Men: Racial Vilification, Misrecognition and Epistemic Injustice
- Conceptual competence injustice
- Epistemic Injustice: An Analysis (Draft)
- Epistemic Injustice, Ignorance, and Trans Experiences
- From 'Intersex' to 'DSD': a case of epistemic injustice
- When Testimony Isn't Enough: Implicit Bias Research as Epistemic Exclusion
- Varieties of Testimonial Injustice
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Eyewitness Unreliability
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- State of Washington v. Christopher Derri, a/k/a John Sites [PDF]
- Innocence Project Exonerations
- National Registry of Exonerations
- Police Changing Lineups to Avoid False IDs
- Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT), Part 3: Demographic Effects [PDF]
- Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification [PDF]
- The Bias in the Machine: Facial Recognition Technology and Racial Disparities · Winter 2021
- State v. Butler
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Framework
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How the Prison System Started, Works, and Harms
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Mass Incarceration
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- One in Five: Ending Racial Inequity in Incarceration
- 50 Years and a Wake Up: Mass Incarceration
- Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024
- How many people are locked up in the United States?
- Why are so many people detained in jails before trial? They’re not wealthy enough to afford money bail.
- Most confined youth are held for nonviolent offenses, or no crime at all.
- Most people in prisons are poor, and the poorest are women and people of color
- State Data Global Index 2024
- In the Shadows: A Review of the Research on Plea Bargaining [PDF]
- Maps: Incarceration Sites in Washington
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Jail Services and Alternatives to Incarceration
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Jury Selection Challenges
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- GR 31 Access to Court Records (k) Access to Master Jury Source List [PDF]
- Sample request language to Clerk of the Court regarding their Jury Selection Process [PDF]
- Jury Selection Processes in Washington Counties [DOCX]
- Race and the Jury
- Race and Voir Dire
- Juries Diversity in Performance and Perceived Legitimacy of their Process [PDF]
- US Census QuickFacts: Population Data for Washington State
- Race and Jury Trials, Reducing Juror Bias
- Raising Issues of Race [PDF]
- No Records, No Right: Discovery & Fair Cross Section [PDF]
- State of Washington v. Benjamin Orozco, Division III [PDF]
- GR 37 - Jury Selection [PDF]
- State v. Jefferson
- State v. Rivers
- Juries Have a Diversity Problem [PDF] (The News Tribune, 2021)
- Duren v. Missouri
- Batson v. Kentucky
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Overuse of Jails
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- Impact on Black and Brown Communities
- Nationally, Black Americans are jailed at almost four times the rate of white Americans.
- Nearly 75% of sentenced offenders and those detained in jail before trial are there for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses.
- Three out of five people in jail are legally presumed innocent, awaiting trial or resolution through plea negotiations.
- The Cycle of Jail/Prison Growth [PDF]
- Impact on Black and Brown Communities
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Law Enforcement and Policing
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Risk, Race & Recidivism: Predictive Bias and Disparate Impact (Related to Release Motions)
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Sentencing / The Sentencing Project
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- One in Five: Disparities in Crime and Policing (11/02/2023)
- Second Look at Sentences Racial Disparities
- At a Glance
- Key Statistics on Sentencing and Policing
- Felony Disenfranchisement
- Incarceration Rates
- Racial and Ethnic Disparities in State Prisons
- State Imprisonment Rates
- Women and Life Imprisonment Webinar (The Sentencing Project, July 2019)
- Justice Is Not a Game: The Devastating Racial Inequity of Washington's Three Strikes Law [PDF] (Seattle University School of Law, June 2024)
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The Power of Illusion
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Trauma Informed Resources
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- Race Based Traumatic Stress Video
- Racial Trauma - Where it Comes From
- Legacy of Trauma: Context of the African American Existence [PDF]
- Understanding Racial Trauma [PDF]
- SAMHSA Resources for Mental Health and Trauma - Informed Care
- Tools for Helping Children Manage Stress
- Racial Trauma Resources & Research
- Race, Trauma, and Social Justice (American Psychological Association)
- Washington Free Alcohol & Drug Rehab Centers
Disproportionality Based on Social Index Categories
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Bias Against Women
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Gender Bias In The Courts: Women Are Not Believed (forbes.com) (04/05/2023)
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Bias Against the LGBTQ+ Community
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- Lavender Rights Project
- LGBTQ People Behind Bars [PDF]
- LGBTQ Competency Toolkit and Publications
- The Experiences of LGBTQ Youth in Schools [PDF]
- National Center for Transgender Equality (transequality.org)
- Overrepresentation of People Who Identify as LGBTQ+ in the Criminal Legal System [PDF] (06/08/2022)
- The Criminal Justice System and the LGBTQ Community: An Anti-Queer Regime | Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science [PDF] (06/13/2022)
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Weight Bias
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Bias Based on Neurodivergence
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- What Is Neurodiversity and Why Does It Matter? | Right as Rain (uwmedicine.org) (09/19/2022)
- Stop Asking Neurodivergent People to Change the Way They Communicate (hbr.org) (10/05/2022)
- Defendants With Autism Spectrum Disorder in Criminal Court: A Judges' Toolkit (2022)
- 8 Facts You Didn’t Know About Neurodiversity and Prisons | Succeed With Dyslexia (02/02/2022)
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Disability Justice / Bias Based in Ableism
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- Activating Change Website
- Ableism & Disability Justice - Racial Justice Resources for Activists, Advocates & Allies - Research Guides at University of Cincinnati (uc.edu) (updated 08/22/2023)
- Anti-Ableist and Inclusive Practice Resource Guide [PDF] (kennedykrieger.org) (2023)
- Ableism In Courts: Discussing Ways to Make Courts More Accessible to Persons With Disabilities [VIDEO] (02/07/2023)
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Bias Based on Religion