Sex, Age, Education, Marital Status, Number of Children, and Employment – the Impact of Extralegal Factors on Sentencing Disparities

Mamak, Kamil; Dudek, Joanna; Koniewski, Maciej; Kwiatkowski, Daniel

doi:10.1163/15718174-bja10030

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…The aim of this research is to examine what impact the 2015 reform of the criminal code, which limited the possibility of using probation, had on the structure of penalties imposed by courts (see also : Mamak et al, 2022a;2022b).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paradoxes of probation: Statutory limitation on the possibility of probation decreased the severity of judgments

Mamak,

Dudek,

Koniewski

et al. 2023

European Journal of Probation

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Probation is a tool to decrease the severity of the legal system. In theory, more instruments of probation mean fewer people deprived of liberty. However, Poland previously faced a paradoxical situation: there was a significant crime rate drop and a growing number of suspended punishments, but—at the same time—the incarceration rate was high. Many argued that the cause of this state of affairs was the overuse of probation instruments. Almost half of suspended punishments of deprivation of liberty were ultimately enforced. The 2015 reform of the Polish criminal law aimed to decrease the statutory possibility of using probation. This study compares trial outcomes from before and after the reform. We examine files from district courts in 13 cities in Poland for two offences: drug possession and drunk driving. We conclude that the limit on probation decreases the severity of the legal system.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paradoxes of probation: Statutory limitation on the possibility of probation decreased the severity of judgments

Mamak,

Dudek,

Koniewski

et al. 2023

European Journal of Probation

Self Cite

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“…Besides finding ways to explore the presence of discriminatory practices in sentencing more robustly, future research efforts should also be driven to help redress them. To do so it is key to investigate the specific extra-legal factors influencing judicial decisions, that are not equally distributed -or attributed -across White and ethnic minority offenders, such as education level (Steffensmeier and Demuth, 2000;Mamak et al, 2022), employment status (Unnever and Hembroff, 1988;Volkov, 2016), family and community connections (Dhami, 2005;Van Wingerden et al, 2016), personal income (Freiburg and Hilinski, 2010;Mustard, 2001), legal representation (Farrington and Morris, 1983;Grabosky and Rizzo, 1983), or demeanour in court (Hutton, 1995), to name a few. Identifying the specific causes of the observed ethnic disparities would avoid broad-brush -and to some extent defeatist -diagnoses, taking ethnic disparities as nothing more than the irredeemable manifestation of racism in the criminal justice system, and facilitate the design of adequately tailored and effective policy responses.…”

Section: Future Avenues Of Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can ethnic disparities in sentencing be taken as evidence of judicial discrimination?

Pina Sanchez,

Geneletti,

Veiga

et al. 2024

JLRM

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Large research efforts have been directed at the exploration of ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system, documenting harsher treatment of minority ethnic defendants, across offence types, criminal justice decisions, and jurisdictions. However, most studies on the topic have relied on observational data, which can only approximate ‘like with like’ comparisons. We use causal diagrams to lay out explicitly the different ways estimates of ethnic disparities in sentencing derived from observational data could be biased. Beyond the commonly acknowledged problem of unobserved case characteristics, we also discuss other less well-known, yet likely more consequential problems: measurement error in the form of racially-determined case characteristics or as a result of disparities within the ‘Whites’ reference group, and selection bias from non-response and missing offenders’ ethnicity data. We apply such causal framework to review findings from two recent studies showing ethnic disparities in custodial sentences imposed at the Crown Court (England and Wales). We also use simulations to recreate the most comprehensive of those studies, and demonstrate how the reported ethnic disparities appear robust to a problem of unobserved case characteristics. We conclude that ethnic disparities observed in the Crown Court are likely reflecting evidence of direct discrimination in sentencing.

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Ethnic Disparities in Sentencing: Warranted or Unwarranted?

Pina-Sánchez¹,

Geneletti²,

Veiga³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Large research efforts have been directed at the exploration of ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system, documenting harsher treatment of minority ethnic defendants, across offence types, criminal justice decisions, and jurisdictions. However, most studies on the topic have relied on observational data, which can only approximate ‘like with like’ comparisons. As a result, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers have often been wary of interpreting such disparities as evidence of discrimination. We use causal diagrams to lay out explicitly the different ways estimates of ethnic discrimination derived from observational data could be biased. Beyond the commonly acknowledged problem of unobserved case characteristics, we also discuss other less well-known, yet likely more consequential problems: measurement error in the form of racially-determined case characteristics or as a result of high heterogeneity within the ‘Whites’ reference group, and selection bias from non-response and missing offender’s ethnicity data. We apply such causal framework to review findings from two recent studies showing ethnic disparities in custodial sentences imposed at the Crown Court (England and Wales), questioning whether the reported disparities should be interpreted as evidence of discrimination. We also use simulations to recreate the most comprehensive of those studies, and demonstrate how the reported ethnic disparities appear robust to a problem of unobserved case characteristics. We conclude that ethnic disparities observed in the Crown Court are likely reflecting evidence of direct discrimination in sentencing.

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Sex, Age, Education, Marital Status, Number of Children, and Employment – the Impact of Extralegal Factors on Sentencing Disparities

Cited by 3 publications

References 87 publications

Paradoxes of probation: Statutory limitation on the possibility of probation decreased the severity of judgments

Paradoxes of probation: Statutory limitation on the possibility of probation decreased the severity of judgments

Can ethnic disparities in sentencing be taken as evidence of judicial discrimination?

Ethnic Disparities in Sentencing: Warranted or Unwarranted?

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