Chapter 10
Race and National Origin Discrimination
Chapter Overview
Racial disparities and discrimination are endemic in the carceral system at every stage. This chapter explores how race impacts the day-to-day experience of incarceration and also issues related to language access in prisons and jails. Materials include case law, settlement agreements, and U.S. Department of Justice investigation documents.
Featured Opinions
- Johnson v. California, 543 U.S. 499 (2005)
- Lee v. Washington, 390 U.S. 333 (1968)
- Mitchell v. Cate, 2:08–cv–01196–TLN–EFB (Jun. 2, 2016)
- Richardson v. Runnels, 594 F.3d 666 (9th Cir. 2010)
- Washington v. Lee, 263 F.Supp. 327 (M.D. Ala. 1966)
Featured, Cited, and Supplemental Litigation Documents
- Johnson v. California, 2:95-cv-01192-CBM-JC (C.D. Cal.)
- Litigation summary and documents
- Settlement (9th Cir. Dec. 12, 2005)
- Jones v. Gusman, 2:12–cv–00859 (E.D. La.)
- Litigation summary and documents
- U.S. Dep’t of Just., Civil Rights Investigation of the Orleans Parish Prison, Louisiana System (April 23, 2013)
- Consent Judgment (Jun. 6, 2013)
- Mitchell v. Felker, No. 2:08–cv–01196–TLN–EFB (E.D. Cal.)
- Litigation summary and documents
- Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment, 2014 WL 546338 (Feb. 7, 2014)
- Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Class certification, 2014 WL 3689287 (Jul. 21, 2014)
- Order Granting Final Approval of Class Action Settlement, 2015 WL 5920755 (Oct. 7, 2015)
Statutes, Treaties, and Regulations
- Executive Order 14,224, “Designating English as the Official Language of the United States,” 90 Fed. Reg. 11363 (Mar. 6, 2025)
- Attorney General Pam Bondi, Memo: Implementation of Executive Order No. 14,224 (Jul. 14, 2025)
Excerpted Sources & Supplemental Documents
- Andrea C. Armstrong, Race, Prison Discipline, and the Law, 5 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 759 (2015)
- James Forman, Jr., Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow, 87 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 21 (2012)
- Emma Kaufman, Segregation by Citizenship, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 1379, 1381-83 (2019)
- Prison Policy Initiative, Incarceration stats by race, ethnicity, and gender for all 50 states and D.C. (Sept. 2023)
- Vera Institute of Justice, Reimagining Prison (Sept. 2018)
Lived Experiences
Additional Reading
General Information
- Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (2012)
- Jack Bass, Taming the Storm, The Life and Times of Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., and the South’s Fight over Civil Rights (1993)
- S. Jonathan Bass, He Calls Me By Lightning: The Life of Caliph Washington and the Forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penalty (2017)
- Charles Crawford, Ted Chiricos, & Gary Kleck, Race, Racial Threat, and Sentencing of Habitual Offenders. 36 Criminology 481 (2006)
- Judith Resnik, Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy (2025)
- Jason P. Robey, Michael Massoglia & Michael T. Light, A Generational Shift: Race and the Declining Lifetime Risk of Imprisonment. 60 Demography 977 (2023)
- Alexander F. Roehrkasse & Christopher Wildeman, Lifetime Risk of Imprisonment in the United States Remains High and Starkly Unequal Scientific Advances (Dec. 2, 2022)
- GAO, Noncitizens in the U.S.: Public Information on Federal Incarcerations (GAO-24-107598) (Sept. 3, 2024)
- Philip Goodman, Race in California’s Prison Fire Camps for Men: Prison Politics, Space, and the Racialization of Everyday Life, 120 Am. J. Socio. 352 (2014)
- Philip Goodman, “It’s Just Black, White, or Hispanic”: An Observational Study of Racializing Moves in California’s Segregated Prison Reception Centers, 42 Law & Soc’y J. 735 (2008)
- Keith Humphreys & Ekow N. Yankah, Prisons are getting Whiter. That’s one way mass incarceration might end., The Washington Post (Feb. 26, 2021)
- Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016)
Statistics
- Council on Criminal Justice, William J. Sabol, Thaddeus L. Johnson, & Alexander Caccavale, Trends in Correctional Control by Race and Sex (Dec. 2019)
- Hamilton Project, Rates of Drug Use and Sales, by Race; Races of Drug-Related Criminal Justice Measures, by Race (Oct. 2016)
- The Sentencing Project, Ashley Nellis, The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons (2016)
- The Sentencing Project, One in Five Series
- The Sentencing Project, Mass Incarcerations Trends (2024)
- Zhen Zeng, U.S. Dep’t of Just., Jail Inmates in 2022: Statistical Tables (Dec. 2023)