Couldn't this just be eliminated by comparing poor black criminal sentencing with poor white criminal sentencing?
I'm fairly certain there are studies which demonstrate that, but I'm at home and can't pull anything up right now.
I can say with complete confidence, however, that plea deals make up the majority of convictions in America (apparently 95% per Google), and that the primary motivation for plea deals is due to excessive caseloads by public defenders and local judges. The main reason this is the case is because if every person sentenced got to argue their case, have all evidence laid out, expert testimony called, and be heard by a jury, the entire justice system would immediately crash from overload. Keep in mind that many people having taken plea deals were eventually exonerated, either through DNA evidence or proof of over-zealous prosecutors or other factors. Obviously, some, probably a majority of those 95% actually committed a crime, but it doesn't change the fact that you're SOL if you didn't and can't afford great legal representation.
I don't think it eliminates the problem, though; these kinds of scenarios that HB specified illustrate how economic disparity perpetuates judicial mistreatment. It turns out that not everyone is guaranteed equal representation under the law. It strikes me that it would be fairer if wealthy white kids were sentenced more frequently for drug possession--but I guarantee you that if the courts became suddenly blind to the economic disparities of legal representation, a bunch of rich white people are going to throw a fucking fit.
So maybe the answer is: send more white kids to jail and get their parents' panties all twisted up in a bunch. Then maybe more people will start paying attention to the fact that black men are more regularly sentenced for crimes that white men also commit because, as it turns out, money speaks louder than justice.
The solutions I'd like to see are:
1. Hard limits on the range a sentence is allowed to vary for a particular crime, so that either the privileged people don't end up that much better off, or the less privileged ones not that much worse off. Same for plea bargains; they can exist, but they must always be offered for the same kind of crime, and to the same degree. I suppose simplifying legal code (e.g. rape is rape, no fifth-degree bullshit) would be needed as well.
2. Decriminalize every crime that cannot be handled by legal system where plea bargains don't exist, meaning every person should have a right to a full and proper criminal trial. I think we've gone so full-circle with our justice system that we're ironically close to the anarcho-capitalist meme where justice is purely a matter of how much you can pay for it. Therefore, mayors and sheriffs up for reelection have a few choices: a) continue prosecuting all crimes with equal legal representation for the defendants, risking violent criminals staying free while marijuana dealers sit in court; b) choose to legalize petty harmless crime to focus on violent criminals, or c) fund the justice system more than 1 fucking percent of your entire government's budget and hire more judges.
3. Raise the standards of conviction to require DNA evidence, video evidence, GPS evidence, or something else free of the unconscious biases of human witnesses. Anything less than that, too bad victim. Incentivize the public to be on the lookout for themselves instead of offloading everything onto the justice system and the hapless victims it routinely swallows up.
