United States and United Kingdom Looking at Issue of Racial Disparity in Criminal Sentencing

The United States and United Kingdom both struggle with identifying the issue of racial disparity in sentencing. Both countries have recently put forth great effort for solving this problem. However, the problem has been recognized and studied for much longer in the United States, due to the alarming patterns of minority imprisonments and executions. According to researchers, black offenders are more likely to receive a death sentence from juries (Aguirre and Baker, 1990; Applegate et al., 1994; Keil and Vito, 1990; Thomson, 1997; Williams and Holcomb, 2001). If a black offender's victim was white, the offender is even more likely to receive the death sentence. Other studies have shown contradicting results as to the differences in severity of sentencing (apart from capital cases) between races (Kapardis, 1985; Spohn et al., 1981; Kleck, 1985).

Researchers in the United Kingdom have also found contradictory results in studies of racial disparity. While some psycholegal researchers did not discover conclusive evidence of a positive correlation between race and the length of the defendant's sentencing (Brown & Hullin, 1992; Crow & Cove, 1984; Hudson, 1989; Kapardis & Farrington, 1981; Jefferson & Walker, 1992), one psycholegal researcher's data showed white defendants were more likely to receive probation than black defendants were (Mair, 1986). However, Mair's study (1986) contained such a small sample that another researchersm Halevy (1995), theorized that Mair's findings may have instead been due to socioeconomical factors. Contradictory to the findings of some other psycholegal researchers, a 1992 study by Hood in collaboration with Cordovil determined when other variables were controlled for, "7 percent of the over-representation of blacks amongst those imprisoned could be attributed to direct discrimination at the sentencing stage". As with Mair's concurrent study (1986), Hood's study (1992) was accused of failure to control for extralegal characteristics of defendants.

Research on racial disparity has been controversial in both the US and the UK. This controversy will continue until researchers develop more efficient ways to control for the overwhelming number of variables involved. This would include not only controlling for variables within the system, such as type of crime and severity of crime, but also for extralegal variables such as defendant characteristics. Research on racial disparity has been ongoing for over 70 years, yet these problems still remain. It is important that methods for controlling these variables (within and outside of the legal system) to obtain a better grasp of the depth of this problem.