The proposed research model emphasizes the prior action of personality factors, considered as a frame of reference to locate the offender and the offense within a set of preexisting actual or potential categories. From the first moment the suspect comes in contact with the law enforcement and criminal justice system, factual elements about the offense and the criminal are interpreted according to the court officer's world vision. Future research on racial/ethnic discrimination in the courts should analyze the factors of criminal prosecution through both attitude and value tests. Value orientation as part of the court officers' personalities should be measured through multiple-item indicators, such as Rokeach's rank-ordering value tests. This procedure would allow evaluation of the psychological conditioning of the courts' decisionmakers and their processes of attributing meaning to written statements coming from other sources (i.e., presentence reports). No references are cited.