The Effect of Race-Crime Typicality on Judicial Sentencing Decisions

Abstract

This paper combined economic and psychological theory to test whether, when sentencing criminal cases, adhere to statistic-based stereotypes relating the race of an offender to the crime committed. Past research suggests that white and black offenders committing crimes that are perceived to be typical for their race are sentenced more harshly than those committing race-atypical crimes. Furthermore, there is evidence that this effect may be mediated by the dispositional or situational attribution of guilt, and that expectations of recidivism based on statistical discrimination may also impact sentence severity. This study examined how race-crime typicality, attributions of guilt, and recidivism influenced how law student judges sentenced white and black offenders for six crimes varying in race-typicality and severity. The results showed no effect of race-crime typicality on sentence length, however there was a direct effect of race on sentence: white offenders were sentenced more harshly than black offenders. Moreover, white defendants received more dispositional attributions than black defendants, and nonwhite gave more extreme attributions of guilt than did white judges. White and nonwhite mock also differed in their decision-making processes. For white mock judges, attribution mediated the relationship between defendant race and expectations of recidivism (without significantly affecting sentencing severity); for nonwhite mock judges, attribution mediated the relationship between defendant race and sentence severity. These results are explained in terms of statistical discrimination, just-world belief, and social dominance orientation.