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.
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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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- Childhood Trauma
- 2021-KIDS-Count Data Book
- Foster Care Statistics
- Racial Disparities Plague Foster Care in America
- Disparate Policing and Child Welfare Referrals
- The Cumulative Prevalence of Parental Termination
- Competency vs. Humility [Video]
- Nurturing Resilience & Joy in/among Young BIPOC Children [Video]
- DCYF Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
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Collecting Fines and Fees
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Addressing Racial Epithets in Cases
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Adultification Bias Resources
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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]
- When an allegation of racial bias either implicit or explict is both made and supported by some evidence, the trial court must rule. State of Washington, Division One, Respondent No. 78591-5-I- Cristian Alexander Quijas [PDF]
- State v. Monday, Prosecutor and Racial Bias [PDF]
- State of Washington v. Andre Devoun McKenzie [PDF]
- State v. Zamora 999597 [PDF]
- Henderson v. Thompson 97672-4 October 2022
- Race and Juvenile Decision Making
- Police Hurt Thousands of Teens — Many Are Black Girls | The Marshall Project
- Confronting Unconscious Racism in Jury Selection
- State Courts' 2020 Commitment Statements to Racial Justice
- DMCJA SCJA Racial Justice Commitment- March 25, 2021 [PDF]
- State v. Ellis Div II Unpublished Opinion [PDF]
- The Science of Justice National Justice Database City Report 2021 Seattle Police Department [PDF]
- Seattle Police Department Terry Stop Data
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
- Tolerance
- Center for Antiracist Research
- Anti-Racism Resource Library
Machine Bias (Risk Assessment Tools)
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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 2021
- State Supreme Courts Don't Match America's Diversity
- Lens of Implicit Bias
- Diversity Impacts How Cases Are Decided
- Active African American Article III Judges
- Abstract of fairness risk in sentencing relatively poor defendants
- Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles
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Caseload Data Visual Reports
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2024 Data Reports
- Superior Court Caseload Reports [EXCEL]
- Superior Court Year-over-Year Trends [EXCEL]
- Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Caseload Reports [EXCEL]
- Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Year-over-Year Trends [EXCEL]
2023 Data Reports
- Superior Court Caseload Reports [EXCEL]
- Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Caseload Reports [EXCEL]
- Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Year-over-Year Trends [EXCEL]
2022 Data Reports
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Council on Public Defense Race Equity Subcommittee BIPOC Forum
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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
- Prisons, Race, and Covid-19
COVID-19 In and Out of Court Challenges
COVID-19 and Pandemic Impacts on Black and Brown Populations
- Mental Health
- Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey Data Tables Demographics
- Racial Wealth Gap Data Report [PDF]
- Black Americans the Wealth Gap, Discriminatory Policies
- Navajo Nation 2020 No Running Water in Midst of Covid [Video]
- The Living Wage (WA) What Does It Take?
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Data Toolbox
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- Prison Policy Initiative
- Quick Facts Washington Demographic Statistics for Counties
- Redistricting Data Tables by Topic
- Black Population by County Map Visual
- Registered Voters by County and Age Group WA SOS
- Demographics of Repeat Arrests
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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 State County Criminal Justice Data Book: 1990 to 2022
- 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]
- 2021 Report Use of Force by Race/Ethnicity- Pierce County Sheriff's Department
- 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 Challenges
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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
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Framework
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How the Prison System Started, Works, and Harms
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Incarceration Rates
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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 as of September 2021
- In the Shadows: A Review of the Research on Plea Bargaining [PDF]
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Jail Services and Alternatives to Incarceration
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Jury Selection Challenges
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- OPD ZIP Code Mapping Tool
- 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]
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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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Police Violence Mapping
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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)
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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