The Implicit Racial Bias in Sentencing: The Next Frontier (2017)

A prominent life scientist recently declared that the Higgs boson particle, the Internet, and implicit bias are the three most important discoveries of the past half-century. In President Obama’s commencement address at Howard University last year, Obama stated: “And we knew . . . that even the good cops with the best of intentions—including, by the way, African-American police officers—might have unconscious biases, as we all do.” Why has implicit racial bias worked its way into a presidential address? More importantly, after focusing so long on explicit biases, what do we need to know and do about the pervasive problem of implicit racial bias in the courtroom?