Summary

Colorism is discrimination based on skin tone—the lightness or darkness of one’s skin. While there is evidence of colorism in the U.S. criminal legal process—from police stops and arrests, to perceptions of criminality and guilt, to conviction and sentencing—some studies have not found colorism or have found colorism only for specific groups. Theory and methodological and contextual differences help explain heterogeneity in the findings. Some theory suggests that stereotypes influence outcomes in the criminal legal system and may vary depending on the context in which decisions are made (e.g., jurisdiction, judge, police office, location of police stop, jury composition).

There was diversity in contextual factors and methods used to assess colorism in the criminal legal process that helps explain conflicting findings across studies. There were differences in skin tone and criminal legal system outcome measurement, study design, sampling, use of self-reported data, age of the data used relative to study publication date, types of statistical analyses performed, inclusion of key control variables and colorism inherent in some of those variables, and geography. Future research could further address differences and limitations in prior studies.

To redress colorism in the criminal legal system, some scholars have suggested mandating implicit bias training, requiring police to reside in the jurisdictions they police, challenging the legality of color-based decisions in the criminal process, and developing anti-profiling policies. State-level race-based police reforms may reduce skin color disparities in criminal legal system outcomes, in addition to reducing racial disparities.