Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

"Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this piece appearing on SSRN.  Here is the abstract: Race matters in the criminal justice system.  Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants.  Why?  Implicit bias is one possibility.  Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans.  Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases?  And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on April 30, 2009 (boomark / email).