Judges show negative ingroup bias toward defendants of their own race.

Evidence

Depew and colleagues (2017) provided the first empirical evidence of negative in-group bias in a randomized design outside the laboratory. They reviewed Louisiana juvenile court cases from 1996 through 2012 and found that, all else held equal, Black (vs. White) juveniles who were randomly assigned to Black (vs. White) judges received longer sentences and were more likely to be incarcerated rather than given probation. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1169

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the 2017 Depew/Eren/Mocan study often cited in judicial-bias literature; also relates to Eberhardt’s Biased.
• SEED: Angle: ‘the cop who fears his own community’ — how ingroup bias in gatekeepers (judges, police, professors) may exceed outgroup bias, and what that implies for diversity hiring as a fix.