"God does not play dice with the universe"

Albert Einstein reportedly once said that "God does not play dice with the universe."  While that may be true, I came across an article published in 2006 in the journal Personality and Psychology Bulletin entitled "Playing Dice with Criminal Sentences: The Influence of Irrelevant Anchors on Experts' Judicial Decion Making" that suggests Einstein's statement doesn't apply to humans.  Basically, the investigators in the study used a roll of the dice to influence sentencing decisions by experienced legal professionals.  The so-called anchoring bias has been well described in a variety of settings - it is a type of bias in which an individual relies upon an initial piece of information (i.e., the anchor) to make decisions.  For example, in this particular study, experienced legal professionals (criminal defense attorneys, judges, and prosecutors) were asked to review several cases of petty theft and then subsequently decide on the sentence (in this case, length of probation in months).  However, before deciding on the length of the probation sentence, the participants rolled a pair of dice.  In half of the cases, the dice were loaded and would only roll either a 1 or 2, while in the other half the dice always rolled a 3 or 6.  The sentencing decisions were significantly longer in the group with the dice that rolled a 3 or 6.  In other words, exposure to the higher dice roll "anchored" these experienced legal professionals to invoke longer sentences for the identical crime scenarios. 

If we are subject to the influence of a completely irrelevant anchoring bias (the roll of a dice), imagine how much we are prone to other, more specific biases.  There have been a number of very high profile shootings of black men by police officers in the last few years.  According to statistics compiled on the website, https://killedbypolice.net/, police officers shot and killed 1,147 civilians in 2017.  Black people were 25% of the victims despite representing only 13% of the U.S. population.  This particular issue has been extensively studied.  Racial bias, even unconscious bias, may be playing a role here as well.  For example, college students enrolled in a general psychology course volunteered to participate in a videogame study.  Subjects were forced to make a split second decision on whether to shoot or not shoot an armed or unarmed alleged perpetrator.  White subjects were more likely to make the correct decision and shoot an armed perpetrator when he (all the perpetrators were males) was Black versus White.  Conversely, White subjects were more likely to "not shoot" an unarmed perpetrator when he was White compared to when he was Black.  Importantly, these results appeared to reflect cultural and racial stereotypes ("Blacks commit more crimes than Whites") than any personal racial prejudice (although, to be fair, what's the difference?).

These are important issues that we, as a society, must address.  Perhaps part of the reason Whites believe that "Blacks commit more crimes than Whites" is the fact that Blacks are much more likely to be incarcerated for the same crime committed by someone White.  In fact, Black individuals are imprisoned at more than 5 times the rate as Whites.  Furthermore, Blacks serve longer sentences in jail than Whites for the same crime.  More than half of people in federal prisons are serving time for a drug offense as a result of the "3 Strikes" policy formulated during the so-called "War on Drugs" at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic during the 1980's and 1990's.  Congress passed mandatory sentencing lawsmandatory sentencing laws that created a 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for crack cocaine (which was more commonly used by Blacks) compared to powder cocaine (which was more commonly used by Whites) - there was a minimum 5-year jail sentence in federal prison for the possession or distribution of 5 grams of crack cocaine or 500 grams of powder cocaine (this remained the case until President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 into law). 

If you want to understand the racial inequities in drug crime, just compare the rhetoric used during the crack cocaine epidemic ("War on Drugs", "3 strikes rule", "Crack moms") with the current opioid epidemic (which has been called a "Public Health Crisis").  Whites are much more likely to be addicted to opioids and heroin compared to Non-whites - ironically, this stark difference probably occurred as a result of the disparities in prescription of pain medications by physicians (Blacks were prescribed pain medications at half the rate of Whites).  All of these issues are discussed in a really great (but disturbing) book called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by the author and civil rights lawyer, Michelle Alexander. 

Unconscious bias is common - we are all guilty of it.  That is why it is so crucial that we recognize that these are important issues that need to be discussed.  It is not acceptable that more Blacks are put in jail - this only perpetuates the myth that "Blacks commit more crimes than Whites."  As Alexander discusses in her book, the statistics actually show that Blacks do not actually commit more crimes compared to Whites - Whites just get off with lighter sentences or, in many cases, no criminal sentence.

As leaders, we need to educate ourselves on the facts.  We cannot continue to perpetuate myth.  "God does not play dice with the universe" - and neither should we.