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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- 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 of Washington v 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 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 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
- 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)
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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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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
- 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
- Equity Dashboard (American Equity and Justice Group)
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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 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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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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- 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)
- 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