{"id":17215,"date":"2020-10-29T15:48:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T19:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=17215"},"modified":"2020-11-04T21:24:44","modified_gmt":"2020-11-05T01:24:44","slug":"racism-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/racism-in-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Racism in Court: Biases That Can’t Be Challenged"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Is there racism in the court system? How do biases in the courtroom contribute to the problem of mass incarceration?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Racism in the court includes implicit and explicit race-based biases in all steps of the legal system. From a racial bias in jury selection to racial sentencing disparities<\/a>, biases in the courtroom disadvantage certain groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read on to understand racism in the court system and how it fits into the New Jim Crow<\/a> system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Racism in Court: A Pervasive Problem<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So racial bias was likely affecting drug arrest targeting. Shouldn\u2019t this be resolvable in the courts? Unfortunately, the courts have made it difficult to challenge racial bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As explained in Chapter 2, the courts allowed stops, even racially biased ones, as long as there was probable cause for some reason other than explicit race<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court ruled that statistical evidence of bias was insufficient for discrimination – there needed to be clear evidence of conscious racial bias. <\/p>\n\n\n\n