How Endogenous System Bias Can Distort Decision-Making in Criminal Justice Systems

Abstract

Most judicial, regulatory, and administrative systems, at least formally, are concerned with the fairness and transparency of their decisions concerning the public. Fairness and transparency of criminal justice operations are critical to creating trust in the legal system and assuring people that the larger social system is legitimate and worthy of support. However, deviations from objective and fair decision-making can be concealed when key actors who are responsible for deciding outcomes in their organizations are also responsible for collecting, assembling, evaluating, and presenting the information on which their decisions are based. Under these conditions such systems are at risk of what we term “endogenous system bias,” where data are acquired and altered in ways to justify desired outcomes that are neither fair nor transparent. The purpose of this paper is to: (1) develop a general model of decision-making constraints that can produce endogenous system bias, (2) review research on endogenous system bias at two key decision stages in one institution: the criminal justice system and (3) conduct an empirical examination of the potential effect of endogenous system bias on law enforcement investigations and prosecutorial charging in a sample of criminal homicide cases in the USA. Implications for law, policy, and social scientific methodology are discussed.