Disproportionate Impacts on Minority Offenders

Sentencing enhancements based on the offender’s prior conviction record are a major contributor to racial disproportionalities in prison populations, since racial minorities tend to have more extensive criminal records. After briefly reviewing the larger problem of disproportionate minority confinement in the United States, and the serious negative consequences of such disparities, this chapter examines data from several states on the ways in which racial differences in prior conviction records and other factors cause disproportionate minority confinement. The chapter focuses on black-to-white disparities, since blacks are the largest nonwhite group in most states and there is more detailed criminal justice data on them than for most other nonwhite groups. But the available data on Hispanics and Native Americans reveals disparities that are sometimes as great as for blacks. The chapter concludes with proposals for revising criminal history enhancement rules that have the largest and least defensible disparate impacts on nonwhite offenders.

Reasons Pro et Contra as a Debiasing Technique in Legal Contexts

Although legal contexts are subject to biased reasoning and decision making, to identify and test debiasing techniques has largely remained an open task. We report on experimentally deploying the technique “giving reasons pro et contra” with professional ( N = 239) and lay judges ( N = 372) at Swedish municipal courts. Using a mock legal scenario, participants assessed the relevance of an eyewitness’s previous conviction for his credibility. On average, both groups displayed low degrees of bias. We observed a small positive debiasing effect only for professional judges. Strong evidence was obtained for a relation between profession and relevance-assessment: Lay judges seemed to assign a greater importance to the prior conviction than professional judges did. We discuss challenges for future research, calling other research groups to contribute additional samples.