It is widely reported that the US criminal justice system is systematically biased in regard to criminal adjudication based on race and class. Specifically, there is concern that Black and Latino defendants as well as poorer defendants receive harsher sentences than Whites or Asians or wealthier defendants. We tested this in a meta-analytic review of 51 studies including 120 effect sizes. Several databases in psychology, criminal justice and medicine were searched for relevant articles. Overall results suggested that neither class nor race biases for criminal adjudications for either violent or property crimes could be reliably detected. For all crimes, effect sizes (in terms of r) for Black vs White comparisons were.054, for Latinos vs Whites, 0.057 and for Asians vs Whites −0.028. There was significant heterogeneity between studies, particularly for Asian vs White comparisons. Effect sizes were smaller than our evidentiary threshold, indicating they are indistinguishable from statistical noise. For drug crimes, evidentiary standards were met, although effect sizes were very small. Better quality studies were less likely to produce results supportive of disparities. Studies with citation bias produced higher effect sizes than did studies without citation bias suggesting that researcher expectancy effects may be driving some outcomes in this field, resulting in an overestimation of true effects. Taken together, these results do not support beliefs that the US criminal justice system is systemically biased at current. Negativity bias and the overinterpretation of statistically significant “noise” from large sample studies appear to have allowed the perception or bias to be maintained among scholars, despite a weak evidentiary base. Suggestions for improvement in this field are offered. Narratives of “systemic racism” as relates to the criminal justice system do not appear to be a constructive framework from which to understand this nuanced issue.

中文翻译：

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种族、阶级和刑事裁决：美国刑事司法系统是否像人们通常认为的那样存在偏见？荟萃分析综述

据广泛报道，美国刑事司法系统在基于种族和阶级的刑事裁决方面存在系统性偏见。具体来说，人们担心黑人和拉丁裔被告以及较贫穷的被告会比白人或亚洲人或较富裕的被告受到更严厉的判决。我们通过对 51 项研究（包括 120 项效应量）的荟萃分析进行了测试。在心理学、刑事司法和医学的几个数据库中搜索了相关文章。总体结果表明，无论是暴力犯罪还是财产犯罪的刑事审判中，都无法可靠地发现阶级或种族偏见。对于所有犯罪，黑人与白人比较的效应大小（以 r 表示）为 0.054，拉丁裔与白人比较的效应大小为 0.057，亚洲人与白人比较的效应大小为 -0.028。研究之间存在显着的异质性，特别是对于亚洲人和白人的比较。效应大小小于我们的证据阈值，表明它们与统计噪声无法区分。对于毒品犯罪，尽管效果很小，但仍达到了证据标准。质量更好的研究不太可能产生支持差异的结果。有引用偏倚的研究比没有引用偏倚的研究产生了更高的效应量，这表明研究人员的预期效应可能会推动该领域的一些结果，从而导致对真实效应的高估。总而言之，这些结果并不支持美国刑事司法系统目前存在系统性偏见的观点。尽管证据基础薄弱，但消极偏见和对大样本研究中具有统计学意义的“噪音”的过度解释似乎使得学者们维持了这种看法或偏见。提出了该领域的改进建议。与刑事司法系统相关的“系统性种族主义”叙述似乎并不是理解这一微妙问题的建设性框架。