By A new study by M. Marit Rehavi of the University of British Columbia and Sonja B. Starr of the University of Michigan Law School shows that Black Americans receive almost 60% long prison sentences than white Americans who committed the same crime.
The study covered 58,000 federal criminal cases and found that there was a significant difference between the sentences given to Black people to those given to white people.
AllGov reports:
According to M. Marit Rehavi of the University of British Columbia and Sonja B. Starr, who teaches criminal law at the University of Michigan Law School, the racial disparities can be explained “in a single prosecutorial decision: whether to file a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence….Black men were on average more than twice as likely to face a mandatory minimum charge as white men were, holding arrest offense as well as age and location constant.” Prosecutors are about twice as likely to impose mandatory minimums on black defendants as on white defendants.