Smoking-gun evidence emerges for racial bias in American courts

YOU DON’T need a degree in statistics to believe that racial disparities plague American law enforcement. Of every 100,000 black adults, 2,300 are incarcerated—five times the rate for whites. This gap is not proof of discrimination: blacks could be five times as likely to break the law. Yet critics say that courts treat blacks more harshly than whites who face similar charges. A recent working paper, by Cody Tuttle of the University of Maryland, bolsters this view by revealing striking evidence of bias.