CUMULATIVE DISADVANTAGE AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT

This chapter suggests a twofold approach by which punishment and sentencing researchers may broaden conceptualizations of inequality in the criminal justice system: by examining and capturing the criminal justice process that occurs before sentencing and by moving beyond individual defendants in order to examine neighborhood-level outcomes. It explores these two advances with an overview of current research done in cumulative disadvantage in courts and sentencing, as well as neighborhood analyses of racial inequality in policing outcomes. The chapter concludes by investigating the ways in which we can consider them jointly in corrections, sentencing, and punishment broadly. These approaches can help us understand some of the broader mechanisms of racial inequality in the wake of the War on Drugs. Although the Drug War may be in the beginnings of a retrenchment, its impact on racial inequality in the criminal justice system and on communities of color is still as relevant as ever.