Framing Justice: Media, Bias, and Legal Decisionmaking

During the 1990s, the news media saturated the American public with stories and images of glassy-eyed, teenaged “superpredators,” who allegedly killed and maimed for sport. These violent, dark and “morally impoverished” youth were running wild in our city streets was the message, and unless we did something, they would destroy the very moral fabric of our society. Drawing on recent social science studies, which demonstrate that the graphic and racialized content of crime news coverage can increase consumers’ cognitive bias in imperceptible, but determinative ways, I argue that exposure to the “superpredator” narrative may have had a discernable impact on not only the attitudes and behaviors of the general public, but also on juvenile justice decision-makers themselves. In doing so, the media had an indirect, but meaningful impact on the uptick in, and entrenchment of, racial disparities in the juvenile justice system and, at the same time, undermined legislative efforts to redress the problem. With the recent passage of legislative mandates targeting the problem of racial disparities in juvenile justice, education, capital punishment and child welfare, and the intensification of an academic debate over the efficacy of the “unconscious bias discourse,” I suggest that this analysis has broad implications

Combating the Color-Coded Confinement of Kids: An Equal Protection Remedy

This Article considers the viability of a constitutional challenge to the disproportionate confinement of juveniles of color – a phenomenon known as “disproportionate minority contact” or “DMC.” Specifically, I ask whether, in the wake of McCleskey v. Kemp and its progeny, it is possible bring an Equal Protection claim based on statistical evidence that juveniles of color are significantly more likely to be detained by juvenile court judges than similarly-situated white youth. I argue that the nature of the juvenile detention decision places it squarely within the contours of the types of administrative decisions for which the Supreme Court has historically accepted statistical evidence of disparate impact to create an inference of discriminatory intent. I also argue that the developmental differences between juveniles and adults and the ideological differences between the juvenile and criminal justice systems make a challenge to the selective detention of youth of color less likely to run afoul of the four pragmatic concerns cited by the Court in McCleskey: the potential infringement on discretionary decision-making, the pre-existence of anti-bias prophylactic measures, the slippery slope rationale, and the risk of usurping the role of the legislature

Cognitive Warfare and Young Black Males in America

The result was a veritable feedback loop whose cognitive output, the mental imprint of morally impoverished super- predators, 14 continually fed its input. [...]even as crime rates among black youth have dropped steadily since the mid-1990s, these selfreinforcing associations and dissociations have prompted lawmakers and their constituents to continue to support laws and policies that they know disproportionately punish and incapacitate young black males. [...]is the apparent extent to which even subliminal racial primes can influence our perceptions of individuals

Combating the Color-Coded Confinement of Kids: An Equal Protection Remedy

This Article considers the viability of a constitutional challenge to the disproportionate confinement of juveniles of color – a phenomenon known as “disproportionate minority contact” or “DMC.” Specifically, I ask whether, in the wake of McCleskey v. Kemp and its progeny, it is possible bring an Equal Protection claim based on statistical evidence that juveniles of color are significantly more likely to be detained by juvenile court judges than similarly-situated white youth. I argue that the nature of the juvenile detention decision places it squarely within the contours of the types of administrative decisions for which the Supreme Court has historically accepted statistical evidence of disparate impact to create an inference of discriminatory intent. I also argue that the developmental differences between juveniles and adults and the ideological differences between the juvenile and criminal justice systems make a challenge to the selective detention of youth of color less likely to run afoul of the four pragmatic concerns cited by the Court in McCleskey: the potential infringement on discretionary decision-making, the pre-existence of anti-bias prophylactic measures, the slippery slope rationale, and the risk of usurping the role of the legislature

Cognitive Warfare and Young Black Males in America

The result was a veritable feedback loop whose cognitive output, the mental imprint of morally impoverished super- predators, 14 continually fed its input. [...]even as crime rates among black youth have dropped steadily since the mid-1990s, these selfreinforcing associations and dissociations have prompted lawmakers and their constituents to continue to support laws and policies that they know disproportionately punish and incapacitate young black males. [...]is the apparent extent to which even subliminal racial primes can influence our perceptions of individuals