NCJ Number
101435
Journal
Journal of Applied Social Psychology Volume: 16 Issue: 2 Dated: (1986) Pages: 150-164
Date Published
1986
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Nine State district judges (6 from Louisiana and 3 from Texas) participated in an experiment whereby all made sentencing decisions on the same crime and offenders on 2 occasions to illustrate the application of a model and obtain disparity estimates for 13 crimes.
Abstract
Two systematic forms of sentencing disparity are the 'judge main effect,' which reflects differences among judges in their overall harshness or leniency, and the 'crime x judge' interaction, which reflects judges' idiosyncracies, perhaps principled, in viewing particular crimes. An unsystematic form of sentencing disparity is found in variations of the same judge's views of the same crime and offender on different occasions. This attributes disparity to judicial unreliability. Study results indicate that for most of the crimes, disparity is due primarily to unreliability over occasions rather than principled disagreements among judges. Implications of these results and the importance of distinguishing different types of disparity are discussed. Tabular data and 26 references. (Author abstract modified)