Massachusetts is failing to dispense equal justice, a new study by Harvard Law School researchers shows. The study looked at criminal cases in Massachusetts courts between 2014 and 2016, finding that Black people accounted for 17.1% of the cases despite being just 6.5% of the state’s population. Latinos were similarly overrepresented in criminal cases, accounting for 18.3% of the cases and just 8.7% of the population. That leaves white people, who make up 74% of the state’s population, with just 58.7% of the criminal cases.
Black and Latino people were also given longer sentences even after researchers took into account factors other than race, including criminal history and more. Yet: “Even after accounting for these characteristics, Black and Latinx people are still sentenced to 31 and 25 days longer than their similarly situated White counterparts, suggesting that racial disparities in sentence length cannot solely be explained by the contextual factors that we consider and permeate the entire criminal justice process,” the researchers reported.
Black people in Massachusetts are incarcerated at 7.9 times the rate of white people; for Latino people it’s 4.9 times the rate of white people. It starts at the beginning. While this study was “unable to observe or measure any racial disparities that may exist in arrest practices, police charging practices, or show cause hearings,” other studies have shown that in Massachusetts, as elsewhere in the U.S., police are disproportionately likely to stop and search Black and Latino people.
The racist disparities go on from there: decisions about who to charge with what crimes, bail decisions, whether cases are brought to District or Superior Court (with the latter imposing longer sentences). Inequality is introduced basically every step of the way.
In addition to the longer sentences when people are incarcerated, the researchers found, “Black and Latinx people are less likely than White people to have their cases resolved through less severe dispositions such as pretrial probation or continuances without finding.” Additionally: “Our analysis shows that one factor—racial and ethnic differences in the type and severity of initial charge—accounts for over 70 percent of the disparities in sentence length,” the researchers wrote. That’s where prosecutors are critically important. Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins, a reformer whose jurisdiction includes Boston, has pledged to stop charging people for minor, non-violent crimes.
“When those who are Black and Latinx, poor, suffering from mental illness or substance use disorder, or otherwise marginalized know that they will be treated differently by those in the position to take away their liberty—or even their lives—their trust in the legal system is eroded,” Rollins told The Boston Globe. “Our communities are made less safe as a result of these disparities.”
The study, conducted by the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School, took four years to complete and was hampered by inadequate data, poor record-keeping, and agencies and offices that didn’t respond to records requests—this last particularly noteworthy since the study was conducted at the request of the chief justice of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.
The problem is clear: Massachusetts law enforcement, including especially prosecutors, will have to do the work of fixing the problem. That starts with who police consider suspicious and initiate interactions with, continues to who gets arrested, goes on to what charges are brought against which people, and of course includes sentencing disparities when people with the same criminal histories are charged with the same crimes.
Meanwhile, the Boston police union was whining about a hardware store worker.
