Chapter 10
Race and National Origin Discrimination
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)
- 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 (June 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. 11, 2014)
- Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Class certification, 2014 WL 3689287 (July 23, 2014)
- Order Granting Final Approval of Class Action Settlement 2015 WL 5920755 (June 2, 2016)
Statutes, Treaties, and Regulations
- None
Non-case Excerpts and Supplemental Documents
- James Forman, Jr., Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow, 87 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 21 (2012)
- Vera Institute of Justice, Reimagining Prison (Sept. 2018)
- Andrea C. Armstrong, Race, Prison Discipline, and the Law, 5 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 759 (2015).
Additional Reading
Other Cited Sources
General
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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, Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S. Corrections (June 2019)