TY  - BOOK
AU  - Feigenberg,Benjamin
AU  - Miller,Conrad
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - Racial Divisions and Criminal Justice: Evidence from Southern State Courts 
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2018///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - June 2018; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - The US criminal justice system is exceptionally punitive. We test whether racial heterogeneity is one cause, exploiting cross-jurisdiction variation in punishment in four Southern states. We estimate the causal effect of jurisdiction on arrest charge outcome, validating our estimates using a quasi-experimental research design based on defendants charged in multiple jurisdictions. Consistent with a model of in-group bias in electorate preferences, the relationship between local punishment severity and black population share follows an inverted U-shape. Within states, defendants are 27%-54% more likely to be sentenced to incarceration in 'peak' heterogeneous jurisdictions than in homogeneous jurisdictions
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w24726
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w24726
ER  -