Does Race Matter? An Examination of Defendant Race on Legal Decision Making in the Context of Actuarial Risk Assessments

<p>Numerous examples show how consideration of extra-legal factors, like defendant race, in legal decision-making are contributing to the overrepresentation of minorities in the legal system. Because triers of fact may be less familiar with risk assessment results presented by expert witnesses, there is a need to examine how legal decision-making is being affected by race in this context. This study aimed to examine whether individuals are in fact relying on race as a factor above empirically supported expert opinions of actual violence risk predictions. The sample consisted of 280 participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. To test the primary hypothesis in this study, a MANCOVA was conducted. When accounting for explicit racism, there were no overall significant effects when examining the relationship between exposure to a hypothetical defendant’s race and percent likelihood of future violence, desired social distance, and severity of punishment. There was, however, some evidence to suggest that individuals with higher reported racial biases were more likely to rank the defendant, regardless of identified race, as high risk. Further, noteworthy limitations and future directions for research are discussed. In particular, concerns about external validity, impression management, and sample demographics are emphasized.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2020

Author dc:creator

• Davis, Riley

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ashley B. Batastini
• Eric Dahlien
• Don Sacco

• violence risk
• racial biases
• legal decision making
• risk assessment
• Other Psychology
• Social Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/718

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1794