UMass Law UMass Law: Spadoni’s New Scholarship Sheds Light on Racial Disparities in Dangerousness Hearings

UMass Law Adjunct Professor Joseph Spadoni’s new article published in the Suffolk Journal of Trial & Appellate Advocacy takes a hard look at how racial bias continues to shape pretrial detention decisions in Massachusetts.

A new article published in the Suffolk Journal of Trial & Appellate Advocacy takes a hard look at how racial bias continues to shape pretrial detention decisions in Massachusetts. The Long View of Racial Disparities in Dangerousness Determinations was selected as the publication’s lead article, and it explores the troubling inequities that persist in the Commonwealth’s Dangerousness Hearings—and proposes a bold legal framework to address them.

Written by public defender, legal scholar, and UMass Law Adjunct Professor Joseph R. Spadoni, the article argues that current dangerousness determinations often mask systemic racial disparities under the guise of neutrality. But rather than merely diagnosing the problem, it offers a path

forward: applying the legal framework from Commonwealth v. Long—a landmark case that empowers defendants to challenge racially motivated policing—as a tool for exposing and mitigating racial bias in pretrial detention decisions.

“Are Black and Brown defendants simply more dangerous than their white counterparts?” writes Spadoni. “Of course not. But without a remedy for challenging racial disparities in dangerousness determinations, defendants of color are unjustly being subjected to the harsh consequences of pretrial incarceration at disproportionately high rates.”

With dangerousness hearings on the rise and racial justice at the forefront of legal reform conversations, The Long View of Racial Disparities in Dangerousness Determinations arrives at a critical moment. It challenges attorneys, judges, and policymakers to confront the uncomfortable truth that pretrial detention practices, when left unchecked, can perpetuate the very inequalities the justice system claims to resist.

The article is available now on Lexis and Westlaw at 30 SUFFOLK J. TRIAL & APP. ADVOC. 1 (2025).