Methods of Care and Hope

Can We Establish the Presence of Discrimination in Sentencing?

Jose Pina-Sánchez

Methods to push the frontier of knowledge

Judges are humans

  • Cases are defined by no more than 10 legal factors

  • Individualisation is an aspiring principle

Effect size matters

  • Strong disparities can only be explained if:

    – the missing legal factors are exerting a large influence

    – and they are unevenly distributed amongst ethnic groups

  • Sensitivity analysis to redirect the burden of proof

    – which missing legal factor could explain those disparities?

Methods to avoid fooling ourselves

Publication bias & cherry picking

  • ‘Race studies’ show twice stronger disparities than other sentencing studies

  • MoJ (2016) did not find disparities for violence or sex offences

    – yet, those findings are systematically ignored

  • We only find disparities in 1 out of 9 offence groups

Unintended consequences

  • If we claim there is discrimination when there is not:

    – we undermine trust in the criminal justice system

    – alienate minority groups

Change of research culture

  • Slow research

    – quality over quantity

  • Open research

    – registered reports

  • Normalise contradictions

    – social reality is messy

    – ‘story telling’ is not always helpful

Through careful methods we can build a more hopeful future