Errors in Judicial Decisions

Joep Sonnemans () and Frans van Dijk ()
Additional contact information
Frans van Dijk: Council for the Judiciary, The Hague, the Netherlands

No 08-089/1, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: In criminal cases the task of the judge is to transform the uncertainty about the facts into the certainty of the verdict. In this experiment we examine the relationship between evidence of which the strength is known, subjective probability of guilt and verdict for abstract cases. We look at two situations: (1) all evidence is given and (2) evidence can be acquired. Roughly half of the participants do not base their decision on a subjective belief of the probability of guilt. The others underestimate in general the probability of guilt, but this is more than compensated by a tendency to convict at too low probability of guilt. In the situation where evidence can be acquired, participants do not acquire enough evidence.

Keywords: Decision under uncertainty; judicial decisions; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-09-19
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/08089.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:tin:wpaper:20080089

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().