Does the weather influence sentencing? Empirical evidence from Czech data

Purpose: Sentencing has been shown to be influenced by different extralegal factors. Following psychological research into the various effects the weather can have on mood and two studies claiming finding an influence of weather on sentencing, we examine the extent to which the weather may influence sentencing. Methods: Using sentencing decisions from twelve district courts in Prague in the period 2011–2015 and multilevel modelling techniques, we explore the impact of temperature, wind speed, sunshine, precipitation, barometric pressure and humidity on the decision to incarcerate and the duration of non-suspended prison sentences. Results: In line with the inconclusive findings in the psychological literature on weather and mood and contrary to previous two studies finding the link between weather and sentencing, we do not find that the weather has any substantial impact on sentencing decision making. Conclusions: We conclude that no meaningful unwarranted disparities in sentencing are caused by the weather in Prague, Czech Republic

Reassessing the Relationship between Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy

Objective: A large body of cross-sectional research has identified a positive relationship between perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy. Following Tyler’s theoretical framework, studies have often interpreted the observed relationship as evidence of an unequivocal causal connection from procedural justice to legitimacy. Here we reexamined the validity of this conclusion by considering the temporal order of that association and the potential biasing effect of time-invariant third common causes. Hypotheses: (a) Past perceptions of police procedural justice would predict future perceptions of legitimacy; (b) Past perceptions of police legitimacy would predict future perceptions of procedural justice; and (c) Perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy would be associated as a result of 3rd common causes. Method: We fitted random intercepts cross-lagged panel models to 7 waves of a longitudinal sample of 1,354 young offenders (M = 16 years) from the “Pathways to Desistance” study. This allowed us to explore the directional paths between perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy, while controlling for time-invariant participant heterogeneity. Results: We did not find evidence of the assumed temporal association; lagged within-participant perceptions of procedural justice rarely predicted within-participant perceptions of legitimacy. We did not find evidence of a reciprocal relationship either. Instead, we detected substantial time-invariant participant heterogeneity, and evidence of legitimacy perceptions being self-reproduced. Conclusions: Our findings challenge the internal validity of the commonly reported positive associations between procedural justice and legitimacy reported in studies using cross-sectional data. Most of such association is explained away after considering time-invariant participant heterogeneity and previous perceptions of legitimacy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved

Exploring the Origin of Sentencing Disparities in the Crown Court: Using Text Mining Techniques to Differentiate between Court and Judge Disparities

Research on sentence consistency in England and Wales has focused on disparities between courts, with differences between judges generally ignored. This is largely due to the limitations in official data. Using text mining techniques from Crown Court sentence records available online we generate a sample of 7,212 violent and sexual offences where both court and judge are captured. Multilevel time-to-event analyses of sentence length demonstrate that most disparities originate at the judge, not the court-level. Two important implications follow: i) the extent of sentencing consistency in England and Wales has been underestimated; and ii) the importance attributed to the location in which sentences are passed – in England and Wales and elsewhere - needs to be revisited. Further analysis of the judge level disparities identifies judicial rotation across courts as a practice conducive of sentence consistency, which suggests that sentencing guidelines could be complemented with other, less intrusive, changes in judicial practice to promote consistency

Nudge the judge? Theorising the interaction between heuristics, sentencing guidelines and sentence clustering

Although it has long been acknowledged that heuristics influence judicial decision-making, researchers have yet to explore how sentencing guidelines might interact with heuristics to shape sentencing decisions. This article contributes to addressing this gap in the literature in three ways: firstly, by considering how heuristics might help produce the phenomenon of sentence clustering, in which a significant proportion of sentences are concentrated around a small number of outcomes; secondly, by reflecting on the role of sentencing guidelines as a feature of the environment within which sentencing decisions are made; and thirdly, by analysing the guidelines from Minnesota and from England and Wales, theorising how their content might interact with heuristics to make clustering more or less likely. Ultimately, we argue that sentencing guidelines likely affect the role played by heuristics in shaping sentencing decisions and, consequently, that their design should be informed by research evidence from the decision sciences

Rethinking Parks: The Role and Place of Charitable Giving (Workshop Report)

On Tuesday 30th April 2019, the University of Leeds, Leeds City Council, Leeds Community Foundation and the Leeds Parks and Green Spaces Forum jointly hosted a national workshop titled ‘Rethinking Parks: The Role and Place of Charitable Giving’ at The Carriageworks Theatre in Leeds. The workshop was generously funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Nesta as part of ‘Rethinking Parks’ - a national programme that aims to develop promising operational models for parks across the country through investigating their potential in locally-implemented national pilot projects. Some 46 delegates from 31 organisations across the public, voluntary and charitable sectors participated in this lively and engaging event, which shared learning and research from the Rethinking Parks project in Leeds. Notably, Dr Anna Barker (University of Leeds) presented the findings of research into public and business opinion of charitable giving to parks and green spaces. The workshop created opportunities for discussion of the findings and their application for similar initiatives in the UK and convened two themed workshop discussions to explore the role and place of charitable giving to parks and green spaces, and ways to harness voluntary donations, drawing on the expertise and practical experience of delegates

Tackling selection bias in sentencing data analysis: a new approach based on a scale of severity

For reasons of methodological convenience statistical models analysing judicial decisions tend to focus on the duration of custodial sentences. These types of sentences are however quite rare (7% of the total in England and Wales), which generates a serious problem of selection bias. Typical adjustments employed in the literature, such as Tobit models, are based on questionable assumptions and are incapable to discriminate between different types of non-custodial sentences (such as discharges, fines, community orders, or suspended sentences). Here we implement an original approach to model custodial and noncustodial sentence outcomes simultaneously avoiding problems of selection bias while making the most of the information recorded for each of them. This is achieved by employing Pina-Sánchez et al. (Br J Criminol 59:979–1001, 2019) scale of sentence severity as the outcome variable of a Bayesian regression model. A sample of 7242 theft offences sentenced in the Crown Court is used to further illustrate: (a) the pervasiveness of selection bias in studies restricted to custodial sentences, which leads us to question the external validity of previous studies in the literature limited to custodial sentence length; and (b) the inadequacy of Tobit models and similar methods used in the literature to adjust for such bias

Preregistration of Study into Disparities in Remand Decisions in England and Wales

This is a preregistration of a study that will investigate the degree of (in)consistency in remand decisions between police forces and between courts in England and Wales. It will do so using new criminal court datasets made available by the Data First project from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in collaboration with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Her Majesty Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS). The study will also use these linked datasets to assess how disparities in remand rates evolve throughout the trajectory of cases from the police remand decision up to the final Crown Court decision, when cases makes it that far.Economic and Social Research Council grant ref: ES/W00738X/1, Exploring the Nature of Ethnic Disparities in Sentencing through Causal Inference

Adjusting for Measurement Error in Retrospectively Reported Work Histories: An Analysis Using Swedish Register Data

We use work histories retrospectively reported and matched to register data from the Swedish unemployment office to assess: 1) the prevalence of measurement error in reported spells of unemployment; 2) the impact of using such spells as the response variable of an exponential model; and 3) strategies for the adjustment of the measurement error. Due to the omission or misclassification of spells in work histories we cannot carry out typical adjustments for memory failures based on multiplicative models. Instead we suggest an adjustment method based on a mixture Bayesian model capable of differentiating between misdated spells and those for which the observed and true durations are unrelated. This adjustment is applied in two manners, one assuming access to a validation subsample and another relying on a strong prior for the mixture mechanism. Both solutions demonstrate a substantial reduction in the vast biases observed in the regression coefficients of the exponential model when survey data is used

Contextual culpability: How drinking and social context impact sentencing of violence

The controversial effect of intoxication on sentencing outcomes has received renewed attention with a series of new empirical studies. However, these studies have relied on survey data that conflate alcohol and drug intoxication and miss pertinent contextual features of the offence. This article explores how alcohol intoxication, and its social context, impact sentence outcomes for violent offences. To do so, the probability of custodial sentence severity is modelled using multilevel Cox regression using data from online sentence transcripts. Findings contribute insights into how punishment is shaped by not only the presence of alcohol intoxication in offending but also in which contexts by highlighting the significant punitive effects of reference to concomitant drug use, the defendant drinking together with the victim and if the offence occurred in a private setting. This helps clarify complex considerations taken into account by sentencers when processing cases and the need for clearer guidance

Developing the Police Response to Child-to-Parent Violence. N8 Policing Research Partnership (PRP)

In 2018, child-to-parent violence (CPV) was described in the House of Commons as ‘a very significant issue’ and ‘a growing problem’ (HC Deb 21 Feb 2018). As with all forms of family violence, the police are at the forefront of responding to the physical, emotional, psychological and financial harm caused by some children to parents (including step, adoptive, and foster parents) and carers. At the N8 Policing Research Partnership (PRP) Knowledge Exchange Conference 2018, which was on CPV, police officers and academics described the lack of knowledge and practice guidance in this important area of policing. This project was developed in collaboration with two police forces in the north of England to address this knowledge gap. One of the forces covers Site A, a sparsely populated, predominantly rural county. The other covers Site B, a densely populated, predominantly metropolitan urban county. The resident population of Site B is over five times that of Site A. This report examines the 4,281 cases of CPV by children aged 10 – 19 years reported to police in Sites A and B between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2018. It also presents insights from interviews with police officers in the sites, and a survey for parents and carers from England and Wales, conducted between 2019 and 2020