From Science Direct:

Aggression and Violent Behavior

Available online 23 December 2023, 101905

Race, class, and criminal adjudication: Is the US criminal justice system as biased as is often assumed? A meta-analytic review

Christopher J. Ferguson, Sven Smith

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2023.101905

Abstract
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 0.054, 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.

Introduction
The degree to which race and class related to disparities in criminal sentencing has long piqued the interest of criminologists (e.g., Guevara et al., 2018; Lehmann, 2020; Lowery & Smith, 2020; Mitchell, 2005). Given a long history of slavery and racism in the United States it is reasonable to worry about disparities continuing to the present day. Scholarly and public perceptions very often appear to suggest that significant, systemic, disparities continue to exist in the criminal justice system (Alexander, 2010). However, empirical studies often deliver mixed results. The current article examines the disparities in criminal justice adjudication in recent years (studies published from 2005 to 2022).

The lack of race bias in law is one of the most replicated social science findings since the 1960s, but few know this.

Progressives assume, evidently, that social scientists are so racist that they’ve never ever looked into this obvious question, while conservatives assume scientists are so deceitful they must have of course repeatedly lied in the studies they must have conducted.

Almost nobody knows that the racial fairness of the criminal justice system—arrests, convictions, and sentencing—has been studied repeatedly at least since the 1960s and time after time, the liberal conventional wisdom of systemic racism has been falsified.

For example, the federal government started its massive National Crime Victimization Survey of 500,000 Americans annually in liberal 1972 as part of looking for evidence to support the theory of a biased criminal justice system: surely, the cops must be letting all the white muggers go with a slap on the wrist. But the NCVS asking crime victims the race of the criminals just vindicated arrest rates.

Progressives seem to believe:

A). Blacks don’t get in trouble with the law more often

When you show that’s not true:

B). Scientists have PROVEN that bias by cops, juries, and judges is the reason. I just can’t remember the names of these heroes.

When you show that’s not true:

C) Scientists are too racist to have ever studied it.

When you show that’s not true, that social scientists actually began avidly hoping to prove in the 1960s that anti-black bias in arrests, convictions, and sentencing was the cause of higher black crime rates, but disappointingly failed repeatedly:

D) Why are you so evil?

[Comment at Unz.com]