A theoretical and empirical critique of racial innocence in sentencing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5136185 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marisa Omori (0000-0002-9929-4349), Alessandra Milagros Early (0000-0003-4421-6826), Luis Torres (0000-0002-9085-2703), Luis C Torres (0000-0001-7940-3176) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 59 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 382-418 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Law & Society Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/lsr.2025.11 |
| OpenAlex | W4408685770 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 125 |
Despite large-scale racial inequalities across multiple social domains, racial innocence highlights the complacency of the law and social science research in denying racial power through race neutral assumptions. We explore three theoretical and methodological mechanisms maintaining racial innocence within quantitative social science: treating unequal structural conditions and organizational practices as impartial, isolating samples to reflect limited stages, and focusing on individual levels of analysis. Given that mass incarceration is one of the most visible modern-day exemplars of racial subordination in the United States, we use the example of incarceration sentencing to highlight these mechanisms. Using case processing data from Miami-Dade County between 2012 and 2015 (N = 86,340), we first examine racial inequality in incarceration sentencing when treating unequal case characteristics impartially across racial groups relative to when we allow case characteristics to be unequal across racial groups. Second, we examine racial inequality when isolating limited samples with narrow decision points relative to when we draw from samples across multiple stages. Finally, we examine racial inequality with individual-level frameworks relative to a neighborhood level frameworks. In this case, racial inequalities in incarceration sentencing with a racially consciousness approach are twice as large than with a racially innocent one
Criminology · Innocence · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending
Thicker than blood
Post-Racial Constitutionalism and the Roberts Court
Misdemeanorland
City on the Edge
The demand for deductibles in private health insurance
A Multilevel Test of Minority Threat Effects on Sentencing
The ASA Statement on p -Values
Institutional Racism
Focally Concerned About Focal Concerns
Components of a Difference Between Two Rates
Critical Race Theory, Fourth Edition
Race Relations
Seeing Race Again
A Meta-Analysis of Race and Sentencing Research
Racism Without Racists
Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference
Reassessing and Redirecting Research on Race and Sentencing
Recent Developments and New Directions in Sentencing Research
Cumulative Disadvantage in the American Criminal Justice System
Beyond the Penal Code
Street Stops and Broken Windows
Racial Innocence
Critical Race Theory Meets Social Science
Assessing determinate and presumptive sentencing—Making research relevant
Is the Impact of Cumulative Disadvantage on Sentencing Greater for Black Defendants
Criminogenic needs and the transformative risk subject
Within-race variations in sentencing outcomes
Socioeconomic marginality in sentencing
Beyond bad apples, toward Black life
Against evidence-based oppression
Digital prediction technologies in the justice system
Conceptualizing color-evasiveness
QuantCrit
Criminal Justice Through “Colorblind” Lenses
The Datafication of Law
The Rise of Criminal Background Screening in Rental Housing
Creating a Positive Future for a Minority Community
When Black + Lesbian + Woman ≠ Black Lesbian Woman
Criminal Courts as Inhabited Institutions
The alchemy of race and rights
"A Critique of "Our Constitution Is Color-Blind
The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection
Ethnicity Effects on Sentence Outcomes in Large Urban Courts
Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America
Privilege and Punishment
Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Sentences
Deracializing Social Statistics
Punishment's place
The Interaction of Race, Gender, and Age in Criminal Sentencing
Race, Drugs, and Policing
No idea whether he's Black, White, or purple”
The Multilevel Context of Criminal Sentencing
Institutionalizing inequality in the courts
Cumulative Disadvantage
Driving While Black
Tracing Charge Trajectories
Court Communities Under Sentencing Guidelines
Sentencing in Context
The New Jim Crow
Anything but racism
Can You Really Measure That? Combining Critical Race Theory and Quantitative Methods
Examining Racial Disparities in Drug Arrests
Critical Race Theory, Race Equity, and Public Health
From bi-racial to tri-racial
The Long Shadow of Police Racial Treatment
The Racial Implications of Voter Identification Laws in America
Automating Inequality
Crack Pipes and Policing
Advancing a sociology of ignorance in the study of racism and racial non-knowing
Policing neighborhood boundaries and the racialized social control of spaces
Looking for Race in All the Wrong Places
Critical Race Theory and Empirical Sociology
Judging Judicial Discretion
Extra-Legal Attributes and Criminal Sentencing
Crack as Proxy
Multiple Disadvantages
Rethinking Racism
A Theory of Racialized Organizations
Death by a Thousand Cuts
Do Blind People See Race? Social, Legal, and Theoretical Considerations
It's Just Black, White, or Hispanic
Prior Offense Record as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The Penology of Racial Innocence
What Counts As Knowledge? A Reflection on Race, Social Science, and the Law
An Introduction toScientific Masculinities
Administrative Records Mask Racially Biased Policing
More than Prejudice
An Integration of Theories to Explain Judicial Discretion
Race and Cumulative Discrimination in the Prosecution of Criminal Defendants
Racial Disparities in Pretrial Diversion
Racial Ideology or Racial Ignorance? An Alternative Theory of Racial Cognition
The Sociology of Discrimination
The Race Discrimination System
Policing, Punishment, and Place
Critical Race Theories, Colorism, and the Decade's Research on Families of Color
The Academic Swoon Over Implicit Racial Bias
Gender, Methodology and People's Ways of Knowing
Structural bias in the sentencing of felony defendants
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |