Professor John Pfaff was quoted in a New York Times piece about the extent to which racial bias affects the decision of prosecutors to press charges.
In recent weeks, the office has begun by removing details — like race and names — from police reports before turning those cases over to prosecutors to decide whether to press charges. Starting in July, the office intends to employ computer software designed by Stanford University researchers to redact a suspect’s race and name, and that of victims. Also removed will be locations where crimes were said to have been committed.
The only information prosecutors will initially have access to is an officer’s incident report, which generally includes the reason someone was stopped before an arrest, evidence that a crime was committed, witness statements and anything a suspect might say.
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Legal analysts said the San Francisco policy appears to go a step further by directly confronting ingrained racial bias that leads some prosecutors, for example, to file charges against African-Americans for low-level drug offenses more frequently than against whites, even though studies show that white people use illicit drugs at higher rates.“It strikes me as an interesting and intriguing thing to do because I don’t get a sense that there’s a lot of systemic change being attempted in this way,” said John Pfaff, a Fordham University law professor and author of “Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform.”
Mr. Pfaff said the potential for bias might be greater among prosecutors than police officers because prosecutors are more likely to be white than police officers, and are generally from higher than average socio-economic backgrounds.