This piece on racial disparities in 18 areas of criminal law references Sonja Starr’s analyses of federal court cases, which reveal longer sentences for blacks than whites arrested for the same crimes. She and colleague M. Marit Rehavi find that much of this disparity is explained by prosecutors’ greater tendency to file charges carrying mandatory life sentences against blacks than whites.

More about Starr’s work cited in HuffPo piece on racism in the US criminal legal system >