Judicial Stereotyping Associated with Genetic Essentialist Biases toward Mental Disorders and Potential Negative Effects on Sentencing

Abstract

This research, utilizing qualitative methodology with grounded theory, develops a model that illuminates a process by which judicial stereotyping associated with genetic essentialist biases toward mental disorders may affect judges' views regarding the sentencing and punishment of offenders with mental disorder diagnoses presented or understood to be genetically influenced. Data, collected through interviews with a sample of 59 Pennsylvania State Court judges, suggest that judges exhibit stereotyping behavior by linking the relationships between three particular genetic essentialist biases (immutability, informativeness, uniformity) and three types of stigmatization (pessimism, dangerousness, family stigma) associated with each bias. When judges exhibited this stereotyping behavior without the effects of intervening conditions, they then expressed how knowledge of the genetic influences of an offender's mental disorder would negatively influence views on punishment, specifically related to more restrictive sentences and support for deterrence and incapacitation. Three intervening conditions associated with judges' personal characteristics (personal experiences involving genetics, strength of determinism vs. free will beliefs, having no personal experiences with mental disorders) influenced whether judges' sentencing views were negatively influenced by such knowledge on genetics. Implications related to therapeutic jurisprudence are discussed.

To Use or Not to Use: No Consensus on Whether and How to Apply Genetic Information in the Justice System

“…Over half of the participants agreed that human behaviours are a product of multiple gene-environment processes, often beyond an individual's control, and that this information should be taken into account in deciding the form and length of sentencing. Consistent with previous studies [13,15], it appears that when aetiological information is presented as more complex/multifactorial (rather than one genetic variant as in the vignette), more participants agree that aetiology should affect both form and length of sentence. However, additional items are required to investigate whether participants endorse the use of genetic information for increasing or decreasing the sentence.…”

“…However, additional items are required to investigate whether participants endorse the use of genetic information for increasing or decreasing the sentence. Previous research, described in the introduction (e.g., [11,15]), suggested wide variability in people's views on whether genetic information should be viewed as mitigating or aggravating in different circumstances. Furthermore, as these items were only available for legally trained people in our study, it is not clear whether lawyers are more willing to take genetic information into account in sentencing than non-lawyers.…”

“…The study also found wide variation across the judges in the sentence length given in the same case, ranging from one to 41 years. Other studies have explored views of legal professionals and other people, and suggested the existence of multiple biases that underlie the observed variation in decisions [15,16].…”

Judging in the genomic era: judges’ genetic knowledge, confidence and need for training

“…The study used a sample of 59 Pennsylvania State Court judges, with a response rate of 7.4% out of a sample of 800 judges approached. The judges were asked to describe their thoughts about sentencing in cases where (a) the offender had mental disorders and (b) the offender’s mental disorder was known to be genetically influenced [ 27 ]. The qualitative analyses showed that a high proportion of judges held essentialist beliefs (e.g.…”

How information about perpetrators’ nature and nurture influences assessments of their character, mental states, and deserved punishment

“…On the other hand, evidence that highlights genetic substrates of disorders can also emphasize the stability of an antisocial trait, in turn increasing evaluations of violators’ dangerousness [13, 17, 25, 30] and inferences that violators are less likely to reform [3, 17, 21, 24]. Such evaluations of dangerousness, particularly related to genetics, can aggravate punishment assessments [5, 31–33]. When a genetic predisposition for criminality is paired with negative environmental experiences, such as abuse, longer prison sentences are often recommended, particularly related to fear of the offenders’ dangerousness [34].…”