Correctional “Free Lunch”? Cost Neglect Increases Punishment in Prosecutors

Aharoni, Eyal; Kleider-Offutt, Heather M.; Brosnan, Sarah F.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.778293

Cited by 4 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Our results complement existing research on punishment cost discounting using a distinctive sample of state judges. Our findings are consistent with other studies on sentencing cost discounting in judges ( Rachlinski et al, 2013 ), prosecutors ( Aharoni et al, 2021 ), and laypeople ( Thomson and Ragona, 1987 ; Gottlieb, 2017 ). Our study extends this research in three key ways.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Restricting our sample to a single jurisdiction also increases our ability to generalize to sentencing behavior more broadly within that jurisdiction. Yet, despite the additional constraints built into our methodology, the sentencing behavior observed in our experiment replicates that of legal practitioners in more geographically diverse samples ( Rachlinski et al, 2013 ; Aharoni et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

“…For instance, scholarship on the heuristics and biases framework suggests that punishments will be sensitive, not just to the overt utility of the cost/benefit information but also extra-legal, contextual factors like its availability ( Tversky and Kahneman, 1973 ; Bennett, 2014 ). In this view, decision-makers follow an “out of sight, out of mind” rule whereby the default decision-making mode is to only consider information that is made explicit at the time of decision ( Aharoni et al, 2020 , 2021 ). This tendency to neglect decision costs seems especially likely in criminal punishment decisions, wherein judges are often tasked to evaluate immoral acts that violate their sacred values.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, only a few studies have examined the effects of punishment cost exposure on judges and prosecutors. In one recent vignette experiment conducted with a national sample of prosecutors ( Aharoni et al, 2021 ), we found that when prosecutors were insulated from sentencing cost information, their prison sentence recommendations for an offender convicted of drug trafficking were almost a third longer than sentences rendered following exposure to brief information about the cost of incarceration ( Aharoni et al, 2018 , 2020 ). Exposure to a fiscally equivalent benefit of incarceration had no impact on prosecutors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Exposure to a fiscally equivalent benefit of incarceration had no impact on prosecutors. We concluded that prosecutors implicitly value incorporating sentencing costs but selectively neglect them unless they are made explicit, and this tendency could have a consistently aggravating effect on the sentencing recommendations they make to judges ( Aharoni et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Nudges for Judges: An Experiment on the Effect of Making Sentencing Costs Explicit

et al. 2022

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Judges are typically tasked to consider sentencing benefits but not costs. Previous research finds that both laypeople and prosecutors discount the costs of incarceration when forming sentencing attitudes, raising important questions about whether professional judges show the same bias during sentencing. To test this, we used a vignette-based experiment in which Minnesota state judges (N = 87) reviewed a case summary about an aggravated robbery and imposed a hypothetical sentence. Using random assignment, half the participants received additional information about plausible negative consequences of incarceration. As predicted, our results revealed a mitigating effect of cost exposure on prison sentence term lengths. Critically, these findings support the conclusion that policies that increase transparency in sentencing costs could reduce sentence lengths, which has important economic and social ramifications.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Nudges for Judges: An Experiment on the Effect of Making Sentencing Costs Explicit

et al. 2022

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Biases in legal decision‐making: Comparing prosecutors, defense attorneys, law students, and laypersons

Teichman,

Zamir,

Ritov

2023

J Empirical Legal Studies

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Previous studies of judgment and decision‐making in adjudication have largely focused on juries and judges. This body of work demonstrated that legal training and professional experience sometimes affect attitudes and mitigate the susceptibility to cognitive biases, but often they do not. Relatively few experimental studies examined the decisions of prosecutors and defense lawyers, although they play a major role, especially in legal systems where prosecutors have a broad discretion in charging decisions, courts' discretion regarding sentencing is constrained, and plea bargains abound. This study directly compares laypersons, law students, and legal practitioners—including prosecutors and defense lawyers—in terms of their attitudes about the criminal justice system and their cognitive biases. It was found that the outcome bias and the anti‐inference bias influenced all groups similarly, but an irrelevant anchor only impacted the decisions of laypersons and law students, and not those of legal professionals. Prosecutors were significantly more inclined to judge a behavior as negligent and reach factual conclusions supporting a conviction. However, the hypothesis that the susceptibility of prosecutors and defense lawyers to cognitive biases would be affected by their role was not borne out. The article considers possible explanations for the reported findings, and discusses their policy implications.

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Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates

Aharoni

Nahmias

Hoffman³

et al. 2023

Front. Psychol.

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Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N = 214), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal punishment judgments (prison vs. probation) among university undergraduates would be influenced by a prompt to provide a justification for one's judgment, and by a brief message describing prison capacity costs. We found that (1) the justification prompt alone was sufficient to reduce incarceration rates, (2) the prison capacity message also independently reduced incarceration rates, and (3) incarceration rates were most strongly reduced (by about 25%) when decision makers were asked to justify their sentences with respect to the expected capacity costs. These effects survived a test of robustness and occurred regardless of whether participants reported that prison costs should influence judgments of incarceration. At the individual crime level, the least serious crimes were most amenable to reconsideration for probation. These findings are important for policymakers attempting to manage high incarceration rates.

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Correctional “Free Lunch”? Cost Neglect Increases Punishment in Prosecutors

Cited by 4 publications

References 22 publications

Nudges for Judges: An Experiment on the Effect of Making Sentencing Costs Explicit

Nudges for Judges: An Experiment on the Effect of Making Sentencing Costs Explicit

Biases in legal decision‐making: Comparing prosecutors, defense attorneys, law students, and laypersons

Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates

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