Discrimination in Sentencing: Showing Remorse and the Intersection of Race and Gender

Abstract

Using an intersectional lens, we investigate how an offender’s race and gender influence perceptions of and reactions to displays of remorse in jurors’ decision-making processes. Drawing on an experiment of a mock criminal trial (N = 1,155), we find that despite perceiving remorse equally across Black and White women and men, respondents rewarded all but Black men for displaying remorse, assigning significantly lighter sentences to remorseful offenders than their nonremorseful White and woman counterparts. Our results illustrate how emotions are used to reinforce existing racial hierarchies and that remorse is a gendered and racialized emotion.