Minority Salience and Criminal Justice Decisions

Hanemaaijer, Kyra; Ketel, Nadine; Marie, Olivier

doi:10.1257/aeri.20240638

Abstract

Decision-makers can exhibit biases when they overemphasize particularly salient features under limited attention. We exploit a sudden salience shock involving individuals of Moroccan descent to examine biases within the Dutch criminal justice system. The salience shock concerned the assassination of a defense attorney by organized crime and thus specifically targeted the justice system. Leveraging high-quality data covering arrest through appeal, we find no impact on police or prosecutor decisions but uncover a 71% increase in sentence lengths imposed by judges on salient individuals. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that judge experience with minority suspects can mitigate bias in these more discretionary decisions.

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