Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

As in most places in the United States, Black and Latinx Californians are overrepresented in correctional facilities. According to a recent Public Policy Institute of California report, there are approximately 4,400 Black men in California prisons per 100,000 people, which amounts to five times the incarceration rate of Latino man, almost ten times the incarceration rate of White men, and 100 times the incarceration rate of Asian men. The cause of these disparities is a source of tremendous debate among practitioners, policymakers, and academic alike, and potential explanations include variation in socioeconomic status, access to employment or education opportunities, differential patterns in policing, and variation in charging and sentencing decisions by prosecutors and judges. Using a unique set of administrative data from the San Francisco Public Defender’s officer, merged with detailed spatial data from the American Community Survey and San Francisco Police Department, we document that Black, White and Latinx indigent defendants in San Francisco have substantially different experiences during the criminal adjudication process. Specifically, defendants of color are more likely to be held in custody during their cases, which tend to take longer than the cases of White defendants. Their felony charges are less likely to be reduced, and misdemeanor charges more likely to be increased during the plea bargaining process, meaning that they are convicted of more serious crimes than similarly situated White defendants. In addition, Black and Latinx defendants are more likely to plead guilty, and the nature of those pleas are different; Black defendants plead guilty to more charges than White or Latinx defendants, while Latinx defendants plead guilty to a smaller fraction of the charges they are booked for than Black or White defendants. After examining multiple potential causes of these differences, we find that the majority of the variance can be explained by two factors: the initial booking decisions made by officers of the San Francisco Police Department or San Francisco Sheriff’s department and racial differences in previous contact with the criminal justice system in San Francisco County.