Stanford Law School’s three Strikes Project has, for more than a decade, challenged some of the harshest sentencing laws in the country, including pioneering “second look” resentencing reforms that helped pave the way for the statewide release of thousands of people serving disproportionately long sentences.

Now the project is turning its attention to a related challenge in California’s criminal justice system: the persistent racial disparities in sentencing that remain even after major reforms.

According to the state’s Prison Population Dashboards, people of color in California continue to serve significantly longer sentences than white people convicted of the same crimes, and nearly half of all individuals serving a “third strike” sentence are Black.

To confront those inequities, the Three Strikes Project and the Legal Defense Fund have launched a coordinated effort to advance claims under California’s Racial Justice Act. In November, they filed 18 petitions on behalf of Black and Latino Californians serving life sentences for minor offenses, urging courts to remedy what they argue are dramatic and unjustified racial disparities in sentencing.

“The racial disparities in California’s justice system are alarming, pervasive, and unjust,” says Michael Romano, JD ’03, director of the Three Strikes Project. “To date, there have been few, if any, successful claims under the Racial Justice Act. We hope this group of cases can break that logjam and provide a blueprint for others to follow.” SL