Given there's research showing harshness increases over time until lunch then dropping markedly, then increasing again over the afternoon this isn't terribly surprising.
We're not likely to eliminate these factors any time soon.
Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
11–20 of 92 posts
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe simple cases could some day be automatically handled by a computer, in which case the judgement will be completely impartial. Initially they could be trained in parallel to real judges to see if the judgements more or less match and to detect errors.
You don't want "impartial" judgements this is how martial law works, the legal system has to take circumstances into account unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. You can't teach computers empathy and empathy is part of our legal system for better or for worse.
That's why I wrote "simple cases" and circumstances could be taken into account as long as the software has access to the person's criminal record, family situation, job, etc.
Empathy in the end comes from knowing about the person's background and, assuming it's possible to provide this information to a software program, it could make a decision as good, and maybe better, than a judge (if anything, that will allow the judge to spend time on more complicated cases). Also it's well known that, for instance, less attractive people get harsher sentences, and machines will be completely immune to this kind of bias.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#13A lot of the discussion around this seems to focus on football, but that's just the easily-measurable proxy for a bad mood the authors found. Presumably an argument with a spouse, a poker game loss, a parking ticket, or a bad interaction with a coffee clerk would have the same effect. It's disheartening that justice is so capricious, but setting sentences through the legislature seems even more fraught. I don't have…
Having a panel of judges that is "isolated" from each other outside of the courtroom can help reduce the likelihood of these things happening. Having attentive clerks as well as maybe mandatory psychiatric counseling for judges can also resolve some issues.
I'm not sure what good psychiatric counseling would do? "Oh you had a fight with your spouse last night? You better take a day or two off."
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe simple cases could some day be automatically handled by a computer, in which case the judgement will be completely impartial. Initially they could be trained in parallel to real judges to see if the judgements more or less match and to detect errors.
You don't want "impartial" judgements this is how martial law works, the legal system has to take circumstances into account unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. You can't teach computers empathy and empathy is part of our legal system for better or for worse.
> You don't want "impartial" judgements
Why?
Your argument seems to be that without empathy in the legal system people would go to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. That doesn't really make sense,
My argument would be that with empathy in the legal system, unlikeable people from the wrong minority with an unhappy judge would go to prison for stealing a loaf of bread.
There is so much disproportionality in the legal system that has arisen from gut feelings and a lack of objectivity - not just obvious things like racism but even just some crimes having far harsher punishments than more damaging ones because they're easier to get angry about.
Formalizing things like reduced punishments for crimes with lower damage (aka. bread is cheap) or born of necessity (aka. the thief can't afford food) seems so trivial a concern in comparison. Obviously formalizing more complex issues is also hard, but the bar to beat isn't set particularly high.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe simple cases could some day be automatically handled by a computer, in which case the judgement will be completely impartial. Initially they could be trained in parallel to real judges to see if the judgements more or less match and to detect errors.
You don't want "impartial" judgements this is how martial law works, the legal system has to take circumstances into account unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. You can't teach computers empathy and empathy is part of our legal system for better or for worse.
I'm pretty opposed to having computers issuing legal judgments for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that I spend a pretty large part of my day surrounded by government-written and government-sponsored software.
But if we were going to go that route eventually, perhaps a system where a judge is provided the "impartial" judgment as additional information or where the decisions are reviewed by a judge before sentencing and could be lessened/cancelled but not increased?
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#16Given there's research showing harshness increases over time until lunch then dropping markedly, then increasing again over the afternoon this isn't terribly surprising. We're not likely to eliminate these factors any time soon.
> We're not likely to eliminate these factors any time soon.
I disagree. Knowing about them can make a big difference, and training can teach people to avoid these errors.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#17A lot of the discussion around this seems to focus on football, but that's just the easily-measurable proxy for a bad mood the authors found. Presumably an argument with a spouse, a poker game loss, a parking ticket, or a bad interaction with a coffee clerk would have the same effect. It's disheartening that justice is so capricious, but setting sentences through the legislature seems even more fraught. I don't have…
Having a panel of judges that is "isolated" from each other outside of the courtroom can help reduce the likelihood of these things happening. Having attentive clerks as well as maybe mandatory psychiatric counseling for judges can also resolve some issues.
What about running these statistics (correlating decisions with day of week, hour of day, etc.) for each judge, and then just tell them: see, in the past year you acted in this not very bright way; maybe you should think about the way you do your job? And, by the way, we'll keep running these statistics on how you judge.
Being made aware of our own biases is often the most effective way to make the situation better.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#18Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having a panel of judges that is "isolated" from each other outside of the courtroom can help reduce the likelihood of these things happening. Having attentive clerks as well as maybe mandatory psychiatric counseling for judges can also resolve some issues.
I'm not sure what good psychiatric counseling would do? "Oh you had a fight with your spouse last night? You better take a day or two off."
Alleviate the psychological pressure that comes from being a judge.
Provide an evaluation as to their ability to preside over a case.
You can think of plenty of other examples where therapy and counseling might be quite good, i rather not have judges secretly medicating themselves with antidepressants, and judging by statistics alone probably more than a handful of them do.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#20A lot of the discussion around this seems to focus on football, but that's just the easily-measurable proxy for a bad mood the authors found. Presumably an argument with a spouse, a poker game loss, a parking ticket, or a bad interaction with a coffee clerk would have the same effect. It's disheartening that justice is so capricious, but setting sentences through the legislature seems even more fraught. I don't have…
Maybe simple cases could some day be automatically handled by a computer, in which case the judgement will be completely impartial. Initially they could be trained in parallel to real judges to see if the judgements more or less match and to detect errors.
> judgement will be completely impartial
It would be just as partial, but instead of the judge's biases it would reflect the preferences of other humans, the software developers and whoever controls them.
I think there's a great risk in misrepresenting to the public that computers are somehow impartial, and not representative and under the control of human interests. It's like saying a legal contract is impartial.