Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

Post by koolba » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #46

jdminhbg wrote: post #2

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…

The solution is restorative justice, where the focus is on repairing the harm rather than punishment. For example, sending a drug addict to prison for 10 years doesn't do anything to alleviate the harm of the crime, and in fact is harmful in and of itself, just in a different way. The law needs to maintain a much closer balance between hurting people and helping people. While hurting criminals does have a deterrent f…

Post by acbabis » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

nxzero wrote: post #36

Once had the very surreal experience while in court waiting to litigate a case to object to a higher court's jurisdiction over a case; my motion was granted, and the case was sent to the lower court. While waiting for the above motion to be heard for over an hour, the person directly behind me was calling how the judge would respond to various matters that required the judge's opinion. Having nothing to do, since mob…

Post by kahirsch » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

hobbyjogger wrote: post #39

brianlweiner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Danziger study assumed that the order in which the parolees appeared was random, which turned out not to be the case: "Danziger et al. (1) concluded that meal breaks taken by Israeli parole boards influence the boards’ decisions. This conclusion depends on the order of cases being random or at least exogenous to the timing of meal breaks. . . [But] case ordering is not random ...the board tries to complete all ca…

Post by cloverich » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #64

koolba wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is restorative justice, where the focus is on repairing the harm rather than punishment. What's the repair/punishment for me smoking a joint on my front porch?

Repair is only applicable when there is victim. The other point is that certain acts can not be meaningfully repaired/repaid within our current societal context. I.e. How do you measure the repayment or actions-required to repair a life that is taken by someone? I would argue indentured servitude is a valid way to go, but it makes people uncomfortable because they see it as slavery. Yet, keeping someone locked up in…

Post by elif » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #61

lukeschlather wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is restorative justice, where the focus is on repairing the harm rather than punishment. For example, sending a drug addict to prison for 10 years doesn't do anything to alleviate the harm of the crime, and in fact is harmful in and of itself, just in a different way. The law needs to maintain a much closer balance between hurting people and helping people. While hurting criminals does have a deterrent f…

> The solution is restorative justice, where the focus is on repairing the harm rather than punishment. What's the repair/punishment for me smoking a joint on my front porch?