IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp16076.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Correcting Racial Injustice: Forensic DNA Technology and the Exoneration of the Wrongfully Convicted

Author

Listed:
  • d'Este, Rocco

    (University of Sussex)

  • Yuchtman, Noam

    (LSE)

Abstract

We study the effects of laws streamlining access to post-conviction forensic DNA technology ("DNA laws"). We present a conceptual framework in which DNA laws' effects differ by race due to unequal access to non-DNA exoneration technologies. Consistent with the framework's predictions, we find that DNA laws: (i) increased DNA-based exonerations for Blacks and non-Blacks; (ii) increased total exonerations for Blacks, while non-Blacks exhibit substitution across exoneration technologies and smaller effects on total exonerations. We estimate that without DNA laws, around 100 wrongfully convicted Black Americans would have died in prison, with wrongfully convicted Blacks spending over 1,800 additional years imprisoned.

Suggested Citation

  • d'Este, Rocco & Yuchtman, Noam, 2023. "Correcting Racial Injustice: Forensic DNA Technology and the Exoneration of the Wrongfully Convicted," IZA Discussion Papers 16076, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16076
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp16076.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kate Antonovics & Brian G. Knight, 2009. "A New Look at Racial Profiling: Evidence from the Boston Police Department," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 163-177, February.
    2. Clément de Chaisemartin & Xavier D'Haultfœuille, 2020. "Two-Way Fixed Effects Estimators with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2964-2996, September.
    3. Mark Hoekstra & CarlyWill Sloan, 2022. "Does Race Matter for Police Use of Force? Evidence from 911 Calls," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(3), pages 827-860, March.
    4. Giovanni Mastrobuoni, 2020. "Crime is Terribly Revealing: Information Technology and Police Productivity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(6), pages 2727-2753.
    5. Jennifer L. Doleac, 2017. "The Effects of DNA Databases on Crime," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 165-201, January.
    6. Brendon McConnell & Imran Rasul, 2018. "Racial and Ethnic Sentencing Differentials in the Federal Criminal Justice System," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 241-245, May.
    7. Kevin Lang & Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer, 2020. "Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 68-89, Spring.
    8. Elizabeth U. Cascio, 2014. "Valuing the Vote: The Redistribution of Voting Rights and State Funds following the Voting Rights Act of 1965," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 379-433.
    9. David Bjerk & Eric Helland, 2020. "What Can DNA Exonerations Tell Us about Racial Differences in Wrongful-Conviction Rates?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(2), pages 341-366.
    10. Roland G. Fryer Jr., 2019. "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1210-1261.
    11. Dippel, Christian & Poyker, Michael, 2021. "Rules versus norms: How formal and informal institutions shape judicial sentencing cycles," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 645-659.
    12. M. Marit Rehavi & Sonja B. Starr, 2014. "Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Sentences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(6), pages 1320-1354.
    13. Shamena Anwar & Hanming Fang, 2006. "An Alternative Test of Racial Prejudice in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 127-151, March.
    14. Goodman-Bacon, Andrew, 2021. "Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 254-277.
    15. Carlos Berdejó & Noam Yuchtman, 2013. "Crime, Punishment, and Politics: An Analysis of Political Cycles in Criminal Sentencing," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(3), pages 741-756, July.
    16. Benjamin Feigenberg & Conrad Miller, 2021. "Racial Divisions and Criminal Justice: Evidence from Southern State Courts," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 207-240, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Julia Godfrey & Kegon Teng Kok Tan & Mariyana Zapryanova, 2023. "The Effect of Parole Board Racial Composition on Prisoner Outcomes," Working Papers 2023-011, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    2. Francesco Barilari & Diego Zambiasi, 2023. "Political Campaigning, and Racial Discrimination in Arrests for Drugs," Trinity Economics Papers tep0223, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    3. Makofske, Matthew, 2020. "Pretextual Traffic Stops and Racial Disparities in their Use," MPRA Paper 100792, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Xiao Lin & Mark J. Browne & Annette Hofmann, 2022. "Race discrimination in the adjudication of claims: Evidence from earthquake insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 89(3), pages 553-580, September.
    5. Shi, Ying & Zhu, Maria, 2022. "Equal time for equal crime? Racial bias in school discipline," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    6. Nicolás Grau & Damián Vergara, "undated". "A Simple Test for Prejudice in Decision Processes: The Prediction-Based Outcome Test," Working Papers wp493, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
    7. Monica C. Bell, 2021. "Next-Generation Policing Research: Three Propositions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 29-48, Fall.
    8. Benjamin Feigenberg & Conrad Miller, 2020. "Racial Disparities in Motor Vehicle Searches Cannot Be Justified by Efficiency," NBER Working Papers 27761, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Nayoung Rim & Roman Rivera & Andrea Kiss & Bocar Ba, 2020. "The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations," Working Papers 2020-065, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    10. Federico Masera, 2022. "The economics of policing and crimeThe economics of policing and crime," Chapters, in: Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Vanin & Juan Vargas (ed.), A Modern Guide to the Economics of Crime, chapter 2, pages 12-29, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Brendon McConnell, 2022. "Racial Sentencing Disparities and Differential Progression Through the Criminal Justice System: Evidence From Linked Federal and State Court Data," Papers 2203.14282, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    12. Pauline Grosjean & Federico Masera & Hasin Yousaf, 2023. "Inflammatory Political Campaigns and Racial Bias in Policing," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(1), pages 413-463.
    13. repec:hal:journl:hal-03680153 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Facchini, Giovanni & Kinght, Brian & Testa, Cecilia, 2020. "The Franchise, Policing, and Race: Evidence from Arrests Data and the Voting Rights Act," CEPR Discussion Papers 14946, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Mark Hoekstra & CarlyWill Sloan, 2022. "Does Race Matter for Police Use of Force? Evidence from 911 Calls," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(3), pages 827-860, March.
    16. Shamena Anwar & Hanming Fang, 2015. "Testing for Racial Prejudice in the Parole Board Release Process: Theory and Evidence," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 1-37.
    17. Melcarne, Alessandro & Monnery, Benjamin & Wolff, François-Charles, 2022. "Prosecutors, judges and sentencing disparities: Evidence from traffic offenses in France," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    18. Kevin Lang & Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer, 2020. "Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 68-89, Spring.
    19. Amartya Bose, 2020. "Racial disparities in law enforcement: The role of in-group bias and electoral pressures," Discussion Papers 2020-11, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    20. Nemschoff, Danielle, 2022. "An evaluation of Crisis-Intervention Team (CIT) training," MPRA Paper 114948, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. David Bjerk, 2022. "Does greater police funding help catch more murderers?," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(3), pages 528-559, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    racial inequality; criminal sentencing; legal institutions; technology and justice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16076. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.