Exploring the origin of sentencing disparities in the Crown Court: Using text mining techniques to differentiate between court and judge disparities

Pina-Sánchez, José; Grech, Diana; Brunton‐Smith, Ian; Sferopoulos, Dimitrios

doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.102343

Cited by 20 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 85 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Their finding suggests a "decision fatigue" of judges that results in differential treatment of defendants based on the time of day their case is adjudicated. 4 In this paper, we find that the impact of an upset loss is observed immediately after the game (on Monday), and it lasts for one work week. Thus, it cannot be attributed to decision fatigue of judges.…”

Section: Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles †mentioning

confidence: 71%

“…Most decisions of referees in professional sports are made very quickly, almost by reflex or intuition. 7 Judicial decisions, on the other hand, 4 Weinshall-Margel and Shaphard (2011) raised issues about the randomness of the order in which the cases are seen by judges and the timing of the meal breaks. See also the response of Danziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso (2011b).…”

Section: Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles †mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles

Eren

Mocan

2018

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

103

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a US state between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks associated with unexpected outcomes of football games played by a prominent college team in the state. We find that unexpected losses increase sentence lengths assigned by judges during the week following the game. Unexpected wins, or losses that were expected to be close contests ex ante have no impact. The effects of these emotional shocks are asymmetrically borne by black defendants. The impact of upset losses on sentence lengths is larger for defendants if their cases are handled by judges who received their bachelor's degrees from the university with which the football team is affiliated. Different falsification tests and a number of auxiliary analyses demonstrate the robustness of the findings. These results provide evidence for the impact of emotions in one domain on decisions in a completely unrelated domain among a uniformly highly educated group of individuals (judges) who make decisions after deliberation that involve high stakes (sentence lengths). They also point to the existence of a subtle and previously unnoticed capricious application of sentencing. (JEL D83, I23, J13, J15, K42, L83, Z21)

show abstract

Section: Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles †mentioning

confidence: 71%

Section: Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles †mentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles

Eren

Mocan

2018

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

103

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Turning to the question of this paper, the decision-maker in our setting is protected from outdoor temperature by climate control, but may "import" the effect of exposure to, for example, an extreme outdoor temperature when they move inside, coming in from the morning commute, or after a break. 6 Determining the physiological mechanisms through which this happens is beyond the scope of our paper. 7 Outdoor conditions could in principle affect the output of the subject even if he never went outside and was exposed to it.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Decision data is merged with hand-collected data on judge gender. In our dataset, 34 percent of judges are 6 We do not observe the time at which a particular file is adjudicated or know the movements of the judge during the day (when he or she is indoors or outdoors) so cannot speak to intra-day variation. However the scheduling of files within the day is done many months in advance and therefore unrelated to temperature realizations.…”

Section: A Immigrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature and Decisions: Evidence from 207,000 Court Cases

Heyes

Saberian

2019

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

102

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We analyze the impact of outdoor temperature on high-stakes decisions (immigration adjudications) made by professional decision-makers (US immigration judges). In our preferred specification, which includes spatial, temporal, and judge fixed effects, and controls for various potential confounders, a 10°F degree increase in case-day temperature reduces decisions favorable to the applicant by 6.55 percent. This is despite judgements being made indoors, “protected ” by climate control. Results are consistent with established links from temperature to mood and risk appetite and have important implications for evaluating the influence of climate on “cognitive output.” (JEL K37, K41, Q54)

show abstract

“…It might be argued that reliance on BAILII, Westlaw and Lexis means that the cases considered in this project are not representative of all court decisions. 47 However, it is likely that cases which progressed to the appeals courts were those which would be more complicated and therefore of most interest from an ethico-legal point of view. Thus, while databaserelated limitation is accepted, the assumed impact upon the results and conclusions of this study are minimal.…”

Section: Study Design and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The UK Dangerous Dogs Act: Improved, but legally and ethically flawed

Allcock

Campbell

2021

Veterinary Record

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: The Dangerous Dogs Act (DDA) is considered among the most controversial pieces of legislation ever passed in the UK. Its effectiveness and how it works in practice, up until a dog and its owner are charged, has been subjected to considerable analysis. However, there has been little examination of how the DDA works after charging, nor of how courts are interpreting it. Method: We accessed legal cases from 1992 to 2019, the period in which the DDA has been in force. Each case was examined from a legal and ethical perspective, using doctrinal legal methodology and the principlism approach to ethics described by Beauchamp and Childress. Results: Analysis showed that while improvements to the function of the act have been made, substantial legal and ethical failings remain, particularly with Section 1 and the therein breed specific legislation (BSL). Conclusion: Legal failings could be partially resolved by removing the reversed burden of proof placed on dog owners and allowing a change of ownership for banned breeds. However, ethical failings could only be resolved through the abolition of BSL. Further study into whether judicial bias exists against certain breeds found to be dangerously out of control is warranted.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

show abstract

Exploring the origin of sentencing disparities in the Crown Court: Using text mining techniques to differentiate between court and judge disparities

Abstract: This is a repository copy of Exploring the Origin of Sentencing Disparities in the Crown Court: Using Text Mining Techniques to Differentiate between Court and Judge Disparities.

Cited by 20 publications

References 85 publications

Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles

Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles

Temperature and Decisions: Evidence from 207,000 Court Cases

The UK Dangerous Dogs Act: Improved, but legally and ethically flawed

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About