Sentencing Members of Minority Groups: Problems and Prospects for Improvement in Four Countries

Members of racial, ethnic, and Indigenous minorities have long accounted for disproportionate percentages of prison admissions in Western nations and of prison populations. The minorities affected vary between countries. Discriminatory or differential treatment by criminal justice officials from policing through to parole is part of the problem. Much media and professional attention focuses on sentencing, where the decision-making is most public. An emerging body of research identifies sentencing as a cause—or, at the very least, an amplifier—of minority overincarceration. Solutions aiming to reduce it have been implemented, with varying but modest degrees of success, in the United States, England and Wales, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Progress toward reducing minority overincarceration has been slow. Most US sentencing commissions have failed to determine the extent to which their guidelines contribute to the problem. The Sentencing Council of England and Wales has taken the limited step of warning judges about racial disparities, without suggesting remedial steps to be taken. Courts in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand have taken more activist approaches, mitigating sentences when offenders adduce evidence of discrimination or abuse by criminal justice officials.