ABSTRACT
The administration of justice in the United States is carried out through coercive state action. By its very nature, government provision of criminal justice services involves government taking or diminishment of individual liberties. When the state arrests or incarcerates a person, it severely restricts that person’s freedom of movement. Those prosecuted for crimes against the state, especially individuals branded with the “felon” label, stand to lose future employment prospects, privacy (e.g., sex offender registry), and the full prerogatives of citizenship (e.g., the franchise, jury service, gun ownership). In the most extreme form of taking, the state may execute a criminal defendant found guilty of a capital crime. Clearly, the actions taken by police, courts, and corrections officials have significant consequences for individuals and society at large. Implicit in this line of reasoning is the idea that the criminal justice function is administered in a lawful and equitable manner. Consider the opposite view. What results when the actions of the state are prejudiced or create disparate impacts? At the micro level, individuals may be wrongly accused of crimes, subjected to excessive force, or unjustly denied early release from prison. Individuals are not the only victims of arbitrary or biased state action. There are pernicious macro-level effects as well. These occur when subsets of the population are subjected to disparate and discriminatory treatment. Take, for example, a situation where members of a minority class, whether racial, ethnic, or economic, are denied due process protections typically afforded to the majority. Chronically disadvantaged groups may come to question a basic principle of American jurisprudence-a belief in “justice for all.”1 In the worst case, these questions may extend to the very legitimacy of the criminal justice enterprise or the state itself. The salve for this societal wound is the fair exercise of authority by all justice system actors.
