A Jury of Her Peers: The Impact of the First Female Jurors on Criminal Convictions

Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer and Randi Hjalmarsson
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Shamena Anwar: RAND Corporation

No 646, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper uses an original data set of more than 3000 cases from 1918 to 1926 in the Central Criminal Courts of London to study the effect of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919. Implemented in 1921, this Act made females eligible to serve on English juries, providing a novel setting for studying the impact of female representation on jury verdicts. Results based on a pre-post research design imply that the inclusion of females had little effect on overall conviction rates but resulted in a large and significant increase in convictions for sex offenses and on the conviction rate differential between violent crime cases with female versus male victims. The inclusion of women also increased the likelihood of juries being discharged without reaching a verdict on all charges and the average time taken to reach a verdict. A complementary analysis of cases in which the jury was carried over from a previous trial also implies that the inclusion of female jurors on the seated jury sharply increased conviction rates for violent crimes against women versus men.

Keywords: jury; gender; crime; convictions; deliberations; verdict; female; court; historical; victim (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J10 K14 K40 N00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://hdl.handle.net/2077/41910 (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: A Jury of Her Peers: The Impact of the First Female Jurors on Criminal Convictions (2019)
Working Paper: A Jury of Her Peers: The Impact of the First Female Jurors on Criminal Convictions (2016)
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