Since my responses to my other two articles were connected I'm going to connect this one too. The idea behind judges being black and white and critiqueing their sentencing is connected to the same themes I already have seen.
The first has to do with the humanity factor that black judges were obviously going to have. They have been discriminated themselves, as they were minorities for their job and class. This ultimately opens up the can of worms having to do with subconscious decision making in gender issues and whether or not someone should be put on death row. The sensitivity of these issues make all of them connected in another way.
The big idea from this connection is that people are indivudals. No matter what their job title, duties or strict regulations are in place for a part of law, the inner self will always prevail. Decisions in court will always have law and society side by side like ine very instance I discussed.
The numbers portrayed in these articles are very misleading. In this specific article the finidngs stated that their were only slight differences from black to white sentencing. It also said that black judges are still less likely to sentence to jail, but discrepancies for gender and race still were evident in the numbers. This small subsection of analysis during this study is meaningless. Detroit or wherever it was taken place is once again not a big enough determining group. The stats and numbers again were not enough for me in any article.
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I agree - when the differences are only 2%, they are negligent enough to show no significant trend. I tend to think that Spohn could have consolidated her article into one paragraph: There is no difference between black and white judges. I would appreciate an attempt at explaining this, instead of attempting to show other minor differences that are not indicative of any trend, especially not a nationwide one.
ReplyDeleteI was also frustrated by this article, as I fel the scope of the research was simply too narrow. First of all, the crimes the defendants commmited were all violent, so it's likely that both blakc and white judges are going to dish out equally harsh penalites for violence. I feel like leniency/harshness would be more easily noticed in non-violent crimes, where the judge may have a bit more discretion. You just don't have the same types of discretion when it comes to violent crime, at least in my mind. The study also noted that it didn't use instances in which cases were acquited or the defendant was found not guilty. I wonder what the trends may have been there as far as leniency goes when it judges of different colors
ReplyDeleteAnd or course, as you guys hit on, the fact that article takes so long to sum up one point - black and white judges sentence similarly - without ever actually explaining WHY. I did appreciate that Spohn at least brainstormed some ideas to explain this difference, but wasn't really able to back it up with evidence.