Sources and Implications of Race and Ethnicity (Mis)measurement in the U.S. Criminal Justice System

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This award funds a research project that will study the effects of measurement error regarding race and ethnicity in criminal justice data, its implications for research, and how it might be used to advance understanding of racial disparities in the U.S. judicial system. Researchers using administrative data collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics assume the quality of data collected for operational purposes is of high quality for research use. In contrast with many data collections by the government where race is self-reported, racial and ethnic information in the justice system is often populated by justice agency personnel, reflecting their perceptions of race and ethnicity. As a result, measurement error is likely to exist in statistical reporting on the demographics of individuals that come into contact with the justice system, as well as in research examining the extent and implications of racial disparities. Such measurement errors could have significant implications for individuals who come into contact with the judicial system in the U.S. This research will not only attempt to correct these errors but also study the effects of these errors on the judicial system. The results of this research will help policy makers develop better policies to reduce racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system and help to establish the U.S. a global leader in the provision of a fair and efficient judicial system. This award will support a research project that will study why criminal justice data may misclassify the race/ethnicity of people who come in contact with the system and the consequences of such misclassification for such individuals. The PIs will address three inter-related issues: (i) measure the extent of discordance between survey and administratively recorded racial and ethnic information on justice involved individuals, (ii) document what factors increase the rate of mismeasurement in the justice population, and (iii) investigate how misclassification impacts individual trajectories. The PIs will do this by leveraging an individual-level linkage between agency-recorded race and ethnicity contained in data from the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS) and a wealth of self-reported micro-level race and ethnicity data from various surveys and administrative data sets held by the U.S. Census Bureau. Using these data resources, the PIs will measure the degree of racial or ethnic mismeasurement in the criminal justice system, pinpoint the stage(s) of the justice system where this mismeasurement occurs, explore local and temporal correlates with mismeasurement error variation, and evaluate the causal impact that mismeasurement has on individuals whose race/ethnicity was inaccurately recorded on their justice outcomes and life trajectories. The results of this research will help policy makers develop policies to reduce racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system and help to establish the U.S. a global leader in the provision of a fair and efficient judicial system. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.