51–60 of 92 posts
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.
A 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…
Indeed other research has indicated that lots of factors can affect a judge's decisions. http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889.full A panel of judges would be one approach. Perhaps judges could be made aware of what the average penalty is for similar cases and that would give them an easier anchor for their decision.
On the practical side, the prisoners were ordered. Judges tried to break for meals after processing a whole 'batch' of prisoners from a specific prison. Within a prison block, those with lawyers went before those representing themselves, and lawyers also ordered their cases however they wanted. As you might expect, prisoners having counsel fared better than those without.
Additionally, they measured "time elapsed from a meal" in two ways: actual wall time (in hours/minutes/seconds/etc), and case order. Both measures were individually significant, but when both were put into a model, only the ordinal one remained significant. This suggests--to me, at least--that the result isn't due to a physiological process: blood sugar levels vary continuously and don't "jump" from case to case.
There was a rebuttal letter in PNAS shortly after it was published.
Edit: HobbyJogger covered most of this first. Thanks!
So if a young person displeases you, then all such young people will be simply marked as a threat +1 by your brain
Data has always driven all the decisions we make. It's just that in the past, before big data, our personal computers (read: brains) did the data wrangling. By the way, we still do it. It's how humans and other living things employ profiling.
Nonetheless, I do believe this is where education, information, and standards should come into play. We should expect training so that judges can overcome things like the result of emotions on sentencing. We should have recommendations of standards for sentencing, and public feedback on how the judge tends to lean. With numbers, a particilar judge can know they are more harsh after lunch, more lenient on women, and other such things. They can look to see what the average sentence range is for the basic situation (x-y for first offense: y-z for second, etc).
Some folks have mentioned a computer system, and I don't think this is all that bad of an idea if used wisely. More like information and suggested sentencing: First offense? Age? Family? Extenuating circumstances that might require leniency or harshness? and then get a range of recommendations with their effectiveness rates.
I do think it is prudent to have sentences seconded by a separate judge, especially if the judge is towards or over the harsher end of the punishments or too far into the leniency. I do think they might get rubber-stamped if not done correctly, but I also think this would get judges to consider outcomes.
It's also proven that judges make harsher sentences just before the lunchtime. (Because they're hungry)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can mitigate them to some extent with awareness and training. With research seeming to show subconscious biases remarkably difficult to remove, I sincerely doubt they can be eliminated. We haven't managed it in society and the workplace despite significant legislative effort.
> I sincerely doubt they can be eliminated. We haven't managed it in society and the workplace despite significant legislative effort. Right. Who made the standard (for anything!) 100% success? But society and the workplace have greatly improved, through social effort and also the resulting legislative one. Just 60 years ago, women were only allowed to be teachers and nurses; not long before that, they needed their h…
Human judges are the least worst option we have, despite and because of fallible human factors.
Society has made huge progress, and is in many respects infinitely improved. Yet ethnic minorities are still subject to racism even from the Police and judicial system, women don't get paid as highly or get proportionately into senior or board roles.
I'm not suggesting we stop, or seeing it pessimistically.
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.
The study you're referencing assumed that the order in which the parolees appeared was random, which turned out not to be the case. More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463053
Thanks.
A 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I sincerely doubt they can be eliminated. We haven't managed it in society and the workplace despite significant legislative effort. Right. Who made the standard (for anything!) 100% success? But society and the workplace have greatly improved, through social effort and also the resulting legislative one. Just 60 years ago, women were only allowed to be teachers and nurses; not long before that, they needed their h…
We're not really disagreeing you know. That we can't eliminate shouldn't discourage us from striving to continue to improve. Human judges are the least worst option we have, despite and because of fallible human factors. Society has made huge progress, and is in many respects infinitely improved. Yet ethnic minorities are still subject to racism even from the Police and judicial system, women don't get paid as highly…