Conditional Race Disparities in Criminal Sentencing: A Test of the Liberation Hypothesis from a Non-Guidelines State

Hester, Rhys; Hartman, Todd K.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2519252

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 63 publications

(25 reference statements)

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“…In addition, the pattern of doses is logarithmic, meaning that the increments between doses are small for short sentences and become larger for longer sentences. This latter finding threatens the validity of research (especially that focusing on serious offenses that have wider sentencing scales) using linear regression models that assume sentences follow a linear pattern (for further critique, see Hester & Hartman 2017). Overall, the present findings are compatible with past research on preferred numbers and with Weber's law and Fechner's law.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Criminal Sentencing by Preferred Numbers

Dhami¹,

Belton²,

Merrall³

et al. 2020

J Empirical Legal Studies

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Criminal sentencing is a complex cognitive activity often performed by the unaided mind under suboptimal conditions. As such, sentencers may not behave according to policy, guidelines, or training. We analyzed the distribution of sentences meted out in one year in two different jurisdictions (i.e., England and Wales, and New South Wales, Australia). We reveal that sentencers prefer certain numbers when meting out sentence lengths (in custody and community service) and amounts (for fines/compensation). These “common doses” accounted for over 90 percent of sentences in each jurisdiction. The size of these doses increased as sentences became more severe, and doses followed a logarithmic pattern. Our findings are compatible with psychological research on preferred numbers and are reminiscent of Weber's and Fechner's laws. The findings run contrary to arguments against efforts to reduce judicial discretion, and potentially undermine the notion of individualized justice, as well as raise questions about the (cost) effectiveness of sentencing.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Criminal Sentencing by Preferred Numbers

Dhami¹,

Belton²,

Merrall³

et al. 2020

J Empirical Legal Studies

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“…Given the heavy caseloads, plea bargaining is the predominant way of conducting business in South Carolina courtrooms. In 2001, more than 98 percent of offenders were sentenced after a guilty plea as opposed to after a trial (Hester and Hartman, 2016); this is consistent with the high plea rate in other U.S. jurisdictions (see Wang and Mears, 2010;Wright, 2005). Pleas in South Carolina take one of three forms: 1) a straight plea where the defendant pleads guilty with no recommendation from the prosecution, 2) a recommended plea where the prosecutor offers a recommendation that has no binding effect on the judge or outcome, and 3) a negotiated plea that is presented to the judge as an agreed-to outcome by the parties that the judge must either accept or reject.…”

Section: South Carolina Judicial Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judicial Rotation as Centripetal Force: Sentencing in the Court Communities of South Carolina*

Hester

2017

Criminology

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Courts as communities theory emphasizes the sentencing differences that can arise between localities within a single state. The results of published studies have highlighted how local differences emerge based on informal sociological and political processes defined by the communities perspective. The findings from recent quantitative studies from South Carolina have revealed notably less county variation in sentencing than has been observed elsewhere. I use qualitative interviews with 13 South Carolina trial judges to investigate sentencing processes and to shed light on these findings. The interviews explore the state's legal structure and culture, including the practice of circuit rotation in which judges travel among counties holding court. The results suggest rotation serves as a centripetal force of sentencing culture, homogenizing what might otherwise be a more varied collection of county‐specific norms. Rotation leads to increased uniformity through judge shopping and the cross‐pollination of ideas and norms. Defendants can strategically judge shop and plead in front of a lenient judge—a process that gives rise to the term “plea judge,” which is a label for the most lenient judges who sentence a large number of defendants. Rotation also increases the interactions among judges and prosecutors, expanding networks and grapevines, and leading to cross‐pollination and the sharing of ideas.

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“…Generally, ambiguous conditions in any domain increase the likelihood that heuristics and biases will influence social judgments (Kahneman, 2011), but we were especially curious about how they might affect legal decision making, especially when such processing might be inadvertently or systematically activated in all decision makers involved in a particular case (see e.g., London and Nunez, 2001 for an existing example). Among some of the most noteworthy of these are pretrial publicity; the CSI effect; and the race, sex, and gender of the defendant (Bjerregaard, Smith, Cochran & Fogel, 2017;Devine, Buddenbaum, Houp, Studebaker, & Stolle, 2009;Hester & Hartman, 2017;Spohn, Gruhl, & Welch, 1987).…”

Section: A Social Judgment? Extralegal Contrast Effects In Hypotheticmentioning

confidence: 99%

A social judgment? Extralegal contrast effects in hypothetical legal decision making.

Butterfield

Bitter

2019

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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Social judgments in ambiguous situations often rely on heuristics and biases, and legal decision makers are often faced with evidence that does not clearly favor one decision over another. Across two studies, we tested whether one extralegal factor, contrast cases, influenced decision making when judicial factors were held constant. In Study 1, participants (n = 100) evaluated whether an imagined prosecutor had sufficient evidence to send the same three target cases to trial. Before deciding these cases, though, the participants first evaluated cases with either relatively stronger or weaker evidence than the targets. Those in the weak-case comparison group were significantly more likely to send target cases to trial, and they believed the prosecutor had a stronger case. In Study 2, all participants (n = 100) evaluated hypothetical parole applications, but the method was otherwise the same as that used in Study 1. The same contrastoriented pattern emerged. Participants who first viewed weaker parole applications rated the identical targets as significantly more rehabilitated. Taken together, the results of these two studies suggest that contrast effects may be one extralegal factor involved in shaping individuallevel social judgments made in legal contexts such as grand juries and parole boards.

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Conditional Race Disparities in Criminal Sentencing: A Test of the Liberation Hypothesis from a Non-Guidelines State

Cited by 3 publications

References 63 publications

Criminal Sentencing by Preferred Numbers

Criminal Sentencing by Preferred Numbers

Judicial Rotation as Centripetal Force: Sentencing in the Court Communities of South Carolina*

A social judgment? Extralegal contrast effects in hypothetical legal decision making.

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