Bennett: Looking Criminal

Ed. Note: For the great many of you asking when the next edition of Judge Bennett’s “The Art of…” series will be here, hold yer horses. It’s coming, but Judge Bennett has judge stuff to do, plus he can’t spend all his free time on scholarly endeavors here when there are law reviews in desperate need of filling. This is what he’s been up to in the meantime.

Judge Mark W. Bennett and Berkeley lawprof Victoria Plaut have completed an article to be published 51 U.C. Davis L.Rev. (forthcoming 2018).

Looking Criminal and the Presumption of Dangerousness: Afrocentric Facial Features, Skin Tone, And Criminal Justice

Abstract

Social psychologists have established that faces of Black males trigger thoughts of violence, crime, and dangerousness and thoughts of crime trigger thoughts and images of Black males. This presumption of dangerousness increases with darker skin tones (colorism) and greater Afrocentric facial features and affects both men and women. We examine the history of the stereotype of Blacks and crime, violence, and dangerousness arising in the United States from the time of slavery. We focus on the historical development of this stereotype through a lens of history, literature, pseudo-science, emerging neuroscience, media distortion of crime reporting, and the development of the Negro-ape metaphor.

We then look beyond the Black-White race dichotomy to explore the evolving social science literature examining the influence of skin tone and Afrocentric facial features on the length of criminal sentences. We further explore the social science supporting the presumption of dangerousness and conclude with recommendations to help ameliorate this problem that permeates the American criminal justice system.

You can find the full article at SSRN. Judge Bennett has written in depth about implicit racial bias in the legal system and on the street, “the presumption of Black dangerousness.” If we’re to address this racial bias, then we need to understand how and why it happens.  In this article, he takes a deep dive into the impact of skin tone and Afrocentric features in sentencing.

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9 thoughts on “Bennett: Looking Criminal”

    1. SHG Post author

      You’re good. (For the sake of clarity, this is the Texas Tornado Mark W. Bennett. So nice, we have Mark W. Bennetts twice.)

  2. Mark W. Bennett

    Dear Texas Tornado…I am always honored when folks think I am you !!!! I like cashing those retainer checks. My utmost apologies on the other way around 🙂

    mark w. bennett, Not The Texas Tornado…the small town Iowa country lawyer

    1. Mark Bennett

      Dear Small Town,

      Having people suck up to me on the internet almost makes the pay cut worth it.

      Warmly,
      TOMWB

  3. LTMG

    Are the opinions of these “social psychologists” any better than those of the phrenologists of yore? Or those of the late 19th century French/Italian school of criminal anthropology? Yep, history, and idiocy, does repeat.

  4. John Neff

    My experience is that there are people who will refuse to believe that there is implicit racial bias. The standard story is “It is not our fault.” and any facts to the contrary are irrelevant.

    1. SHG Post author

      I’m not a fan of calling it “implicit” racial bias. First, I don’t believe that to be the case, but rather plain old bias that some try to pretend they don’t actually possess. Second, because it relieves us of some level of responsibility for our bias. After all, we’re not prejudiced, just suffer from a wee bit of implicit racial bias, which somehow makes us a better sort of discriminator.

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