Minority Salience and Criminal Justice Decisions

Kyra Hanemaaijer, Nadine Ketel and Olivier Marie

No 20357, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Decision-makers can exhibit biases when they overemphasize particularly salient features under limited attention. We exploit a sudden salience shock involving individuals of Moroccan descent to examine biases within the Dutch criminal justice system. The salience shock concerned the assassination of a defense attorney by organized crime and thus specifically targeted the justice system. Leveraging high-quality data covering arrest through appeal, we find no impact on police or prosecutor decisions but uncover a 72% increase in sentence lengths imposed by judges on salient individuals. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that judge experience with minority suspects can mitigate bias in these more discretionary decisions.

Keywords: Salience; Minority; Netherlands; Criminal justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 J15 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
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