[Unsurprising 'News'] When Race Tips the Scales in Plea Bargaining

No one should be surprised by what I'm saying, because what I'm saying is true, and they even acknowledge it in the study. Of course, some people want to believe in the racism boogie man that is the cause for all of life's problems depending on the color of your skin and those people....well you really can't help them.

 

Institutional racism (bias if you want) exists. The civil right movement is barely 80 years old. To deny that institutional racism simply end with that movement or a few decade later is pretty naive. It's lovely and a nice though, but it still exists. Deep down, you know it, but you deny it. Few acknowledge or can accept something society said is wrong, but it's not that wrong. It's actually natural. First have to see it before you can deal with it constructively. Mass denial is what keep it going.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/american-denial/

 

Another factor can come from area... if you have a minor offense in a rural area where the judge doesn't see 50-60 a day, that judge may be a little more lenient. If you are in a suburban area where this stuff happens constantly, the judge probably has little to no patience.

I did not research the study to see if this was also controlled for.....

 

No, it wouldn't, given that the vast majority of the variation regarding attorneys was captured when they controlled for public versus private defenders. There is no need to get a rating for how good a specific attorney is in relation to other attorneys when we are looking at the most important factor, which is whether the defendant was able to hire a private attorney or used a public defender.

Especially when they provide quantitative evidence and you don't have jack ****.

They're already wise to your BS.

No particular "man" to be certain, but our criminal justice institutions have a great deal of racial bias. This is merely a fact, one which you dispute without providing even a whit of evidence, merely speculation about other people's analysis.

I'm not optimistic about you providing evidence, you appear to prefer the equivalent of a toddler's "nuh-uhhhhhh."

 

I read it and to their credit they tried to control for as many variables as they could, but some variables you simply cannot adequately control for and when it comes to something that has just a crazy number of variables all working at the same time, with some that cannot be adequately controlled for, I argue that it's damn near impossible to actually do so.

 

Especially since virtually nobody believes in this silly straw man at all. Nobody is claiming racism "is the cause for all of life's problems," what is being claimed is that there are problems which are caused as a result of institutionalized racism.

 

Again, that's based entirely on the assumption that a private attorney is going to be superior to the public defender and that private attorneys are fungible....that's not always the case (a fact btw that the SCOTUS has endorsed). In the example I gave of the 2 separate DUI cases, both hired private counsel....one just hired a vastly superior attorney. My friend wouldn't have gotten a significantly worse deal if he represented himself and a public defender possibly could have gotten him a better deal.

As I said, they tried, but it's simply not a variable that can be adequately controlled for and unsurprisingly, the largest difference between the 2 groups was when it came to instances where superior attorneys would be able to generate significantly different outcomes. When it came to serious crimes or situations where the defendant had priors, the gap was relatively small to non-existent.

This points to differences in representation being the largest single difference maker.....even if that goes against the narrative you want to further.

 

No, not "impossible" at all. But, I suppose you'll continue to lean on "nuh-uhhhh" since you don't actually understand the analysis.

 

It wouldn't be "damn near impossible" if private attorneys were fungible, but they are not....again a fact that the SCOTUS has endorsed.

 

This is a safe assumption. On average, the client of a private attorney could be different from the client of a public defender. Thus, controlling for the two major divisions of attorneys captures the VAST majority of the variation from attorney competence. Even when controlling for this, race remains a significant factor. You don't have to have a relative 1-100 ranking of each attorney, unless you're arguing that the reason for the significant result is because black people tend to choose inadequate lawyers. This is simply not possible when looking at public defenders since those with such lawyers were assigned them by the court. As such, we have as-if random assignment within the group of lawyers who are public defenders, these clients didn't choose their lawyers, so disparities are likely to be distributed normally. They aren't, race is still a significant predictor.

Of course, race is a significant predictor among those with minor or first offenses among those with private attorneys, which is the only place where you could argue self-selection effects as those clients somehow or another chose their attorney. The part that is telling is that the same results hold among those with minor or first offenses who used private lawyers.

Anecdotally, you're right. However, this study encompassed tens of thousands of cases and explicitly controlled for what you assume is a significant factor based on your anecdote.

If you don't see the problem, then you don't understand quantitative analysis.

You can and they did. They used the as-if random assignment of public defenders, which is as close to the gold standard of randomly assigned treatment and control groups as it could get given the subject of the study.

Finding a significant racial effect among people randomly assigned to lawyers is about as close to causality as can be established with observational data. The "unsurprising" part is that you don't understand and continue to make the same assertions over and over, lacking any countering evidence and based entirely on assumptions.

Yes, serious crimes largely have mandatory minimums, flattening the differences between defendants. When defendants have priors, sentencing becomes more about the rap sheet. However, if the process that generates the rap sheet (prior, most likely minor, offenses) has a racial bias, then the bias is still affecting people, just earlier in the process than with the current offense.

No, it doesn't, look up random assignment if you'd like to understand how such randomization removes "quality of representation" as a factor.

 

Even if private attorneys have wide variation, public defenders are randomly assigned and those two groups experienced similar outcomes.

 

For some reason, it didn't get fixed after our last thread. So, we've got to try again.

 

You are simply not correct here. Controlling for those 2 divisions of attorneys is the best they could do, but it absolutely does not capture the "vast majority" of the variation from attorney competence. Again, private attorneys are not fungible, but you keep suggesting that they are given that it's the only way it doesn't shoot holes in the interpretation of the study.

I know you just really want to believe that it's the racism boogie man instead of taking a more logical view of the situation and realizing that economic factors play a MUCH bigger role, but you are doomed to fail.....even if some people will buy your BS in order to use it as an excuse for failure in their own lives. People love having someone or something else to blame, and you are playing into that.

 

Suggesting that all attorneys are of similar quality is like saying that all football players are of similar quality.....then saying that you controlled for it by isolating college football players from NFL players....yeah doesn't really make that any better given that you are starting with a false premise.

There's way too large of a difference in quality and I would suggest that if you knew more lawyers, you'd realize that.

 

In other new water is wet. Black people have been getting the proverbial short end of the stick on this side of the world since the 1500s

 

They people who determine these offers should not be aware of the race - just the facts of the case and why they are offering a bargain. That should strip out race and see if these differences disappear.

 

I'm not suggesting any such thing. I'm telling you that the fact that finding racial effects among the population which gets randomly assigned an attorney has controlled for the competence of the lawyer through random assignment. The fact that this group (defendants with randomly assigned public defenders in minor cases or those in which it is the defendant's first offense) is statistically comparable to the other group (defendants with chosen private attorneys in minor cases or those in which it is the defendant's first offense), indicates that attorney competence in these types of cases isn't a major factor. This is a virtual certainty for the first group since random assignment allows us to disregard "competence" as an explanatory or confounding variable.

No, I want to believe only what the facts and evidence tell me. You're the one who seems obsessed with making sure the word "racism" is associated with the term "boogie man."

I never disputed that economic factors play a large role. However, even when socioeconomic status is controlled, race comes up as a major factor.

Says the guy who hasn't provided so much as a shred of evidence.

I am definitely doomed to fail to change the minds of people who have decided never to update their views no matter how compelling the evidence. However, I'm aiming at the people who are reading this with an open mind, not you.

Not everyone talks about this issue in order to use it as an excuse for failure in their own lives. Personally, institutional racism in the criminal justice system doesn't affect me much, if at all.

Nice assumption though.

And some people avoid looking at reality, you're a prime example.

 

Random assignment of attorneys removes attorney quality as a confounding variable.

 

That's simply not true. It still does not address the fact that the quality of representation is different depending on what attorney you are assigned. There's almost no way to adequately account for that variable. Now sure, they did the best they could, but it was not sufficient.

The basic fact that you can't get around is that legal representation is not fungible, so you can't make the generalizations you want to make in order to push your narrative.

Also, I'm fine with you feeling like the system is holding people back, but you'll have to expect me to laugh at you for it just like I would do for any crazy conspiracy theorist.

 

Why would black people be assigned attorneys of lesser quality, if it's random assignment? Just by chance?