Minority Salience and Criminal Justice Decisions

Kyra Hanemaaijer, Nadine Ketel and Olivier Marie
Additional contact information
Olivier Marie: Erasmus University Rotterdam and Tinbergen Institute

No 24-065/V, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: When decision-makers overemphasize salient features under limited attention, biased decisions can result in settings in which decisions should be unbiased. We exploit a sudden shock in the salience of individuals of Moroccan descent in the Netherlands to test the vulnerability of decisions of various actors in the Dutch criminal justice system to biases. Using high-quality data on decisions made from arrest through appeal in the Dutch CJS, we find that the sentence length of individuals of Moroccan descent convicted of a crime increased by 79% after the shock. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that more-experienced judges mitigate this effect. Finally, we find suggestive evidence of longer-term costs for defendants of Moroccan descent in that their labor income drops by 40% over the four years following their judgment of conviction.

Keywords: salience in decision making; criminal justice system; Netherlands (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 J15 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/24065.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Minority Salience and Criminal Justice Decisions (2024)
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:20240065

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 ().