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Criminal Justice

Although much of the field data indicates Black vs. White people receive more frequent guilty verdicts and harsher sentences in the criminal justice system, recent laboratory work tends to find null results or a pro-Black bias where White rather than Black defendants receive harsher verdicts. ​

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Across five studies where participants read about a suspect of a violent assault, we consistently found a pro-Black bias and this finding was not completely due to social desirability, as previous research suggests. Rather, we found perceptions of the criminal justice system is related to the pro-Black bias. Specifically, the more one perceives the criminal justice system as racially biased (via believing there needs to be less evidence to charge and convict a Black vs. White suspect), the more one provides a more lenient verdict for the Black defendant. However, perceived criminal justice racial bias did not significantly impact the White defendant's verdict.

These results suggest that people's attitudes toward Black individuals may become more positive. Specifically, previous work indicates people automatically associate Black individuals with criminality. If people are associating the criminal justice system as racially biased toward Black individuals, that Black-criminal association may weaken.

Lesick, T. L., & March, D. S. (2024). Perceptions of anti-Black bias in the criminal justice system contribute to pro-Black (versus White) bias in the criminal justice research. Basic and Applied Psychology.

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