Brian D. Johnson, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, will be the featured speaker for the Department of Criminology, Law and Society's Colloquium series.
Johnson is the recipient of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar and the ASC Division on Corrections and Sentencing Distinguished New Scholar Awards. He is a recent co-Editor of Criminology and currently serves as the gubernatorial-appointed Criminal Justice Policy Expert on the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing. His research addresses issues related to social inequality in the criminal legal system, with a particular focus on racial disparities in prosecution and punishment. His published research appears in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology and Justice Quarterly.
Abstract: The study of racial inequality in the criminal legal system is a lodestone of contemporary research in criminology, sociology and legal studies. Most work examines disparities in final punishment, without adequate attention paid to the social processes that generate it. A significant proportion of criminal cases are diverted or dismissed, and most convictions are the result of negotiated guilty pleas. Prosecutors wield immense discretion in these cases, yet relatively little empirical work investigates their role in the punishment process. The present study analyzes detailed case management data from the State’s Attorney’s Office in Baltimore City. It examines the various ways that charging decisions mitigate and aggravate racial inequality, and it assesses racial and ethnic disparities across multiple stages of the guilty plea process.
