Identity in Court Decision-Making

We explore the role of identity along multiple dimensions in high-stakes decisionmaking. Our data contain information about demographic and socioeconomic indicators for randomly assigned jurors and defendants in a Swedish court. Our results show that defendants are 15 percent less likely to get a pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc
Main Authors Ahrsjö, Ulrika, Niknami, Susan, Palme, Mårten
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 01.01.2022
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Summary:We explore the role of identity along multiple dimensions in high-stakes decisionmaking. Our data contain information about demographic and socioeconomic indicators for randomly assigned jurors and defendants in a Swedish court. Our results show that defendants are 15 percent less likely to get a prison sentence if they and the jurors belong to the same identity-forming groups. Socioeconomic background and demographic attributes are at least as important, and combining several identities produces stronger effects.