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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Disproportionality in Conviction, Sentencing, and Charging
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Fair Cross Section
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Maps
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Incarceration Sites in Washington
- Adult Incarceration in Washington [PDF]
- Adult Incarceration in Washington - Large Format/Accessible [PDF]
- Youth Incarceration in Washington [PDF]
- Youth Incarceration in Washington - Large Format/Accessible [PDF]
- Adult and Youth Incarceration in Washington [PDF]
- Adult and Youth Incarceration in Washington - Large Format/Accessible [PDF]
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WSBA Council on Public Defense Race Equity Subcommittee BIPOC Forum
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- Report: 2023 Forum Project Information and Results [PDF]
- Supplemental: BIPOC Forum Project Tracker [XLSX]
- Supplemental: About the Data Visualizations [PDF]
Bias and Discrimination in the Legal System
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Antiracist Guidance and Resources
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- Anti-racism Resource Guide: Race/Culture Social Construct
- Dealing with Racism: How to support victims of racism and how to become anti-racist | Well Minds Psychiatry & Consulting
- Racism is a Public Health Crisis: Map of Declarations by State
- NYU Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation: Anti-Racism Resource List [PDF]
- NYU Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation: Toolkit for Navigating Difficult Conversations Related to Anti-Racism [PDF]
- Stay hopeful and do 'uncomfortable things'--Bryan Stevenson
- Race: The Power of an Illusion
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Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
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Disparate Financial Impacts
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LFOs
- What You Need To Know About Ending Cash Bail | Center for American Progress
- Washington State Auditor's Report: Reforming Bail Practices in Washington
- 21 Principles for the 21st Century Prosecutor | Brennan Center for Justice | Fair and Just Prosecution
- The Disparate Financial Impact of the American Justice System
- A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor
- Fiscal Pressures, The Great Recession, and Monetary Sanctions in WA Courts of Limited Jurisdiction
- Debtors' Blocks: How Monetary Sanctions Make Between-neighborhood Racial and Economic Inequalities Worse
Wealth Disparity
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Child Welfare Advocacy and Cultural Humility
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- Resources for Youth Defenders on Challenging Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality
- 2026 KIDS COUNT Data Book | Annie E. Casey Foundation
- Racial Disparities Plague Foster Care in America
- Family Surveillance: Police and the Reporting of Child Abuse and Neglect
- The Cumulative Prevalence of Termination of Parental Rights
- Moving from Competency to Humility: A Practical Overview [VIDEO]
- Nurturing Resilience & Joy in/among Young BIPOC Children [VIDEO]
- Washington DCYF Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice
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Client-Centered Advocacy
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Addressing Racial Epithets in Cases
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Adultification Bias Resources
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- Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls' Childhood | Georgetown Center
- Snapshot on the State of Black Women and Girls: Sex Trafficking in the U.S.
- Personal Restraint Petition of Asaria Justice Miller
- How Criminalization Impacts the Mental Health of Black Girls
- Disrupting the Impacts of Implicit Bias | National Academies
- Adultification Bias: Where Race and Gender Collide
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Bias
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Alleging Bias
- State v. Bagby
- Implicit Racial Biases in Prosecutorial Summations: Proposing an Integrated Response
- State v Cristian Alexander Quijas (02/18/2020)
- Racial Bias, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and the Right to a Fair Trial in State v Monday
- State v. Andre Devoun McKenzie
- State v. Zamora
- Henderson v. Thompson
- Race and Juvenile Justice Decision-Making
- Police Hurt Thousands of Teens Every Year. A Striking Number Are Black Girls | The Marshall Project
- Confronting Unconscious Racism in Jury Selection
- DMCJA & SCJA: Racial Justice Commitment
- State v. Ellis
- National Justice Database Project | The Science of Justice: Seattle PD
- Seattle Police Department Terry Stop Data
- State v. Horntvedt
- Inferable Discrimination: A Landmark Decision Addresses Selective Law Enforcement
- State v. Chacon Arreola Pretextual Stops
Defenders, Prosecutors, and Bias
- Public Defense Attorneys' Perception of Race and Bias
- United States v. Armstrong Selective Prosecution (1996)
- The Racial Reckoning of Public Interest Law
- I Want a Black Lawyer to Represent Me
Bias and Mental Health
Implicit Bias
- Confronting Bias | The Gault Center
- Take an Implicit Association Test | Project Implicit
- The Bias Beneath: Two Decades of Measuring Implicit Associations
- White Anti-racism: Living the Legacy | Southern Poverty Law Center Learning for Justice
- Anti-Racism Resource Library | American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Bias in Risk Assessment Tools
- Machine Bias
- How We Analyzed the COMPAS Recidivism Algorithm
- Of Risk Assessment and the Problems of Bias and Justice
Witness Bias
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Bias, Judges and Courts
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- Seattle Times Article: WA Supreme Court 'We're not colorblind'
- Diversity of the Federal Bench: statistics on the gender and racial diversity of the Article III Courts
- State Supreme Court Diversity - May 2024 Update | Brennan Center for Justice
- State Supreme Courts Don't Match America's Diversity
- The Lens of Implicit Bias | National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
- Abstract: Impact of risk assessment on judges' fairness in sentencing relatively poor defendants | American Psychological Association
- 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]
- Criminalization of Black and Brown communities in the Midwest adds to public health crisis during COVID-19 pandemic
- The Data | The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic
- UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts on Black and Brown Populations
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Data Toolbox
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- Data Toolbox | Prison Policy Initiative
- Detailed Data Tool | The Sentencing Project
- Map: Washington State Black Population by County
- Pierce County Criminal Justice Data
- Police Stop Data | The Stanford Open Policing Project
- Population and Demographics | WA Office of Financial Management
- Seattle Police Department - Officer Involved Shootings (OIS) Dashboard
- U.S. Census Bureau Quick Facts: Washington
- U.S. Criminal Justice Data | The Sentencing Project
- Voter Demographics Dashboard | WA Secretary Of State
- Washington State Statistical Analysis Center
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Demographics of Power
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- Confronting the Demographics of Power: America's Sheriffs [PDF]
- Contacts Between the Police and Public, 2022 | Bureau of Justice Statistics
- Pierce County Sherriff's Department Use of Force
- Pierce County use-of-force rates against people of color 'not acceptable' | Tacoma News Tribune
- Pierce County Use of Force Analysis
- Racial Profiling | ACLU
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Epistemic Injustice
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- 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 and Wrongful Conviction
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- State of Washington v. Christopher Derri, aka John Stites
- Cases | Innocence Project
- National Registry of Exonerations
- Police Are Changing Lineups to Avoid False IDs
- Face Recognition Vendor Test Part 3: Demographic Effects
- Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification
- The Bias in the Machine: Facial Recognition Technology and Racial Disparities · Winter 2021
- State v. Butler
- Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States
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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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- Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems | Prison Policy Initiative
- One in Five: Ending Racial Inequity in Incarceration
- Incarceration and Crime: A Weak Relationship
- 50 Years and a Wake Up: Ending the Mass Incarceration Crisis in America | Then Sentencing Project
- Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2026 | Prison Policy Initiative
- How many people are locked up in the United States? [IMAGE]
- Why are so many people detained in jails before trial? They’re not wealthy enough to afford money bail [IMAGE]
- Most confined youth are held for non-person offenses, many for acts that are not "crimes" at all [IMAGE]
- Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities [IMAGE]
- Most people in prisons are poor, and the poorest are women and people of color [IMAGE]
- States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2024 - State Data
- In the Shadows: A Review of the Research on Plea Bargaining | Vera Institute of Justice
- The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons
- Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs | Brennan Center for Justice
- Vera Reimagining Prison Web Report: American History, Race, and Prison
- Washington State Profile | Prison Policy Initiative
- Racial Disparities Persist in Many U.S. Jails
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Jail Services and Alternatives to Incarceration
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Jury Selection Challenges
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- Washington State Court Rules: General Rules - GR 31 Access to Court Records (k) Access to Master Jury Source List
- Sample request language to Clerk of the Court regarding their Jury Selection Process [PDF]
- Race and the Jury: Illegal Discrimination in Jury Selection | Equal Justice Initiative
- State v. Tesfasilasye
- Issues to Develop at Trial: March 2021 - Addressing Implicit Bias During Voir Dire | Center for Appellate Litigation
- Race and Voir Dire | NACDL
- Arguments for Diverse Juries [PDF]
- Could discussing race during criminal trials reduce juror bias? | ABA Journal
- Procedures for Challenging Eyewitness Identification Evidence
- No Records, No Right: Discovery & Fair Cross Section
- State of Washington v. Benjamin Orozco
- GR 37 - Jury Selection
- State v. Jefferson
- State v. Rivers
- Duren v. Missouri
- Batson v. Kentucky
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Overuse of Jails
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Law Enforcement and Policing
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Sentencing
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- One in Five: Disparities in Crime and Policing
- One in Five: Racial Disparity in Imprisonment--Causes and Remedies
- A Second Look at Injustice
- The Sentencing Project: Issues
- Racial and ethnic disparities: Research and statistics | Prison Policy Initiative
- Expanding Electoral Engagement Among Justice-Impacted People
- Justice Is Not a Game: The Devastating Racial Inequity of Washington's Three Strikes Law
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Trauma-Informed Resources
![How many people are locked up in the United States? [IMAGE]](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/images/pie2026.webp){kind=link}
![Why are so many people detained in jails before trial? They’re not wealthy enough to afford money bail [IMAGE]](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/images/pie2025_bail_income.webp){kind=link}
![Most confined youth are held for non-person offenses, many for acts that are not "crimes" at all [IMAGE]](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/images/pie2026_youth.webp){kind=link}
![Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities [IMAGE]](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/images/pie2026_race_bar.webp){kind=link}
![Most people in prisons are poor, and the poorest are women and people of color [IMAGE]](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/images/pie2026_income.webp){kind=link}
Disproportionality Based on Social Index Categories
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Disability Justice / Ableism
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LGBTQ+ Community
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- Lavender Rights Project
- LGBTQ People Behind Bars [PDF]
- Diverse & Resilient: LGBTQ Resources
- Research: LGBTQ+ youth experiences in school | Glisten
- Advocates for Trans Equality
- Overrepresentation of People Who Identify as LGBTQ+ in the Criminal Legal System
- The Criminal Justice System and the LGBTQ Community: An Anti-Queer Regime | Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science
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Neurodiversity
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Religion-based bias
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Women and Girls