RJA - Analysis

About CRJA

The California Racial Justice Act (RJA) acknowledges that racial disparities persist in the criminal justice system due to the high standards of evidence required to prove discrimination. This new law allows defense attorneys to file a RJA motion when there is prima facie evidence of disparities in charging, conviction, or harshness of sentencing. If the court determines that a preponderance of evidence shows that race, ethnicity, or national origin impacted the case, the judge may vacate a conviction, declare a mistrial, reduce charges or dismiss enhancements, and/or the defendant may no longer be eligible for the death penalty. ‍ However, the RJA leaves two significant problems unresolved. Firstly, the act affirms that the legislature intends for the public to have access to aggregate data and statistical evidence of racial disparities in charges, convictions, and sentencing, but makes no provision for releasing such data. Secondly, it does not define an acceptable statistical method for demonstrating racial disparities. ‍ The only public dataset related to race and ethnicity in San Diego county is the traffic stop data under the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) from the San Diego Police Department. Researchers and journalists have been utilizing the police stop data in San Diego County to analyze whether racial bias affects the outcomes of police stops and the resulting charges. An article by data reporters from the San Diego Union-Tribune found that police over-patrol in large minority population neighborhoods. Some areas with large minority populations saw more enforcement than mostly white areas with similar crime totals. ‍ Police stops are neither the only source of charges nor the only source of potential bias in the criminal justice system. Given that someone has had charges filed against them, whose case is allowed to proceed to trial and whose case is dismissed or plead out? For cases that proceed to trial, who’s case results in conviction, and for how long?

Our Goal

Our project, funded through a UC San Diego School of Social Sciences Advancing Racial Justice grant, seeks to obtain and make publicly available data on the racial composition of charges, convictions, and sentences in San Diego County and its municipalities through Public Records Act (PRA) and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The project also seeks to establish methods to investigate the data for statistical evidence of racial bias, and perform those analyses on the data. The findings are to be reported through an open-source, interactive web tool in addition to a formal report.