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Judges can project racial bias from earlier actors in the case pipeline

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tagsja-picks, question, category/causal-relationships
aliases@joseph_avery_bias_2021, loc. 729

2 min read

Judges can project racial bias from earlier actors in the case pipeline

Evidence

The criminal justice process is lengthy, and it is multilayered. There are a number of key actors—prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, among others—of which judges are just one. The ultimate decisions made by judges embody the decisions made by these other actors before the case has arrived in front of the judge. This realization poses a challenge to the investigation of judicial bias because it is important to filter out various confounding factors to pinpoint the sources of any potential bias, if it exists, and to design effective public policy to eliminate the bias. Thus, an overarching examination of judicial bias would investigate the actions/decisions of each actor in the judicial system separately, while accounting for the fact that one actor’s decision may impact the decision of another actor, and that these decisions may be interdependent. For example, judges’ decisions may reveal racial bias even when judges themselves are racially unbiased, if it is the case that prosecutors show bias. Alternatively, racially unbiased prosecutors may adjust their behavior in how they handle cases based on the race of the defendant if they recognize that judges are racially biased. Thus, analyses of judicial decision-making need to be statistically sophisticated to account for observable and unobservable factors that determine the judicial decisions under investigation. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 729

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

  • QUESTION: This compounding-of-bias-across-actors framing connects to the ‘bias is a system property’ theme — readers could trace similar cascades in hiring pipelines or loan approvals.
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