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Title: | Can ethnic disparities in sentencing be taken as evidence of judicial discrimination? |
Authors: | Pina-Sánchez, J Geneletti, S Veiga, A Morales, A Guilfoyle, E |
Keywords: | sentencing;disparities;discrimination;causal graphs;sensitivity analysis |
Issue Date: | 11-Jun-2023 |
Publisher: | Northumbria Journals |
Citation: | Pina-Sánchez, J. et al. (2023) 'Can ethnic disparities in sentencing be taken as evidence of judicial discrimination?', Journal of legal research methodology, 3 (1), pp. 1 - 29. Available at: https://northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/jlrm/article/view/1394 (accessed: 31 December 2023). |
Abstract: | Large research efforts have been directed at the exploration of ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system, documenting harsher treatment of minority ethnic defendants, across offence types, criminal justice decisions, and jurisdictions. However, most studies on the topic have relied on observational data, which can only approximate ‘like with like’ comparisons. We use causal diagrams to lay out explicitly the different ways estimates of ethnic disparities in sentencing derived from observational data could be biased. Beyond the commonly acknowledged problem of unobserved case characteristics, we also discuss other less well-known, yet likely more consequential problems: measurement error in the form of racially-determined case characteristics or as a result of disparities within the ‘Whites’ reference group, and selection bias from non-response and missing offenders’ ethnicity data. We apply such causal framework to review findings from two recent studies showing ethnic disparities in custodial sentences imposed at the Crown Court (England and Wales). We also use simulations to recreate the most comprehensive of those studies, and demonstrate how the reported ethnic disparities appear robust to a problem of unobserved case characteristics. We conclude that ethnic disparities observed in the Crown Court are likely reflecting evidence of direct discrimination in sentencing. |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/27853 |
ISSN: | 2752-3403 |
Other Identifiers: | ORCiD ID: Eoin Guilfoyle https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2497-7735 ORCiD ID: Jose Pina Sanchez https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9416-6022 ORCiD ID: Sara Geneletti https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6456-7258 ORCiD ID: Ana Veiga https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6301-1212 ORCiD ID: Ana Morales https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8473-1502 |
Appears in Collections: | Brunel Law School Research Papers |
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FullText.pdf | Copyright © 2023 Jose Pina Sanchez, Sara Geneletti, Ana Veiga, Ana Morales, Eoin Guilfoyle. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access). | 466.43 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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