The Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion

The Article is organized as follows: Part II provides an introduction to implicit bias research, orienting readers to the important aspects of implicit bias most relevant to prosecutorial discretion. Part III begins the examination of implicit bias in the daily decisions of prosecutors. The Part presents key prosecutorial discretion points and specifically connects each of them to implicit bias. Part IV recognizes that, despite compelling proof of implicit bias in a range of domains, there is no direct empirical proof of implicit bias in prosecutorial decision-making.

It thus calls for an implicit bias research agenda designed to further examine how and when implicit bias affects prosecutorial decision-making, including studies designed to test ways of reducing the harms of these biases. It then begins a necessarily early look at potential remedies for the harms associated with implicit bias in prosecutorial discretion.