EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Judges, Juveniles, and In-Group Bias

Briggs Depew, Ozkan Eren and Naci Mocan

Journal of Law and Economics, 2017, vol. 60, issue 2, 209 - 239

Abstract: We investigate the existence of in-group bias (preferential treatment of one's own group) in court decisions. Using the universe of juvenile-court cases in a US state between 1996 and 2012 and exploiting random assignment of juvenile defendants to judges, we find evidence for negative racial in-group bias in judicial decisions. All else being equal, black (white) juveniles who are randomly assigned to black (white) judges are more likely to be placed in custody, as opposed to being placed on probation, and they receive longer sentences. Although observed in experimental settings, this is the first empirical evidence of negative in-group bias based on a randomization design outside the lab. We provide explanations for this finding.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/693822 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/693822 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Judges, Juveniles and In-group Bias (2016) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/693822

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/693822