Do moral intuitions influence judges’ sentencing decisions? A multilevel study of criminal court sentencing in Pennsylvania

The influence of judges' personal moral values on their sentencing decisions is of longstanding interest to researchers and the public. Few studies, however, have examined this influence empirically. Using a unique data set that combines a survey of 81 criminal court judges with archival data on their 40,385 criminal sentences over a 2-year period, and drawing on Moral Foundations Theory, we hypothesize that judges with strong care and fairness intuitions will sentence defendants less severely while judges with strong loyalty, authority, and sanctity intuitions will sentence defendants more severely. We further hypothesize that these effects will be heightened when the defendant is from a racial minority group. Results show that sentencing outcomes are largely independent of judges’ moral intuitions, except that fairness intuitions tend to increase leniency, especially when the defendant is Black, and sanctity intuitions tend to decrease leniency. Implications for future research on sentencing are discussed.

© This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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Work Title Do moral intuitions influence judges’ sentencing decisions? A multilevel study of criminal court sentencing in Pennsylvania
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Eric Silver
  2. Jeffery T. Ulmer
  3. Jason R. Silver
Keyword
  1. Moral foundations theory
  2. Criminal sentencing
  3. Sentencing disparities
  4. Judicial discretion
License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Social Science Research
Publication Date September 20, 2023
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2023.102927
Deposited February 15, 2024

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  • Created
  • Added SSR-Moral_Foundations_and_Sentencing.docx
  • Added Creator Eric Silver
  • Added Creator Jeffery T. Ulmer
  • Added Creator Jason R. Silver
  • Published
  • Updated Keyword, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • Moral foundations theory, Criminal sentencing, Sentencing disparities, Judicial discretion
    Publication Date
    • 2023-09-01
    • 2023-09-20
  • Updated