Are ethnic minority groups punished more harshly? Studying ethnic disparities in imprisonment decisions in the Netherlands
Members of most ethnic minority groups are overrepresented in crime statistics. This overrepresentation may be attributed to a disproportionate involvement of ethnic minority groups in criminal offenses, but can also be caused by criminal justice system selection biases that (un)intentionally disadvantage certain suspect groups. The relatively broad discretionary freedom that Dutch judges enjoy also leaves judicial decision making open to potentially irrelevant influences, such as suspects’ ethnicity. This study examines ethnic disparities in imprisonment decisions in the Netherlands using quantitative data. Three different datasets are analyzed to assess ethnic disparities in sentencing, allowing us to take other sentencing factors, such as criminal history, offense characteristics, and personal circumstances, into account. Results indicate that there are ethnic disparities in imprisonment decisions in all datasets, even after controlling in detail for other sentencing factors.