Justice Isn’t All That It Seems

Things don’t always work the way they should

Take the judicial system as an example.

We hope that judges are always fair and impartial.  That they apply the logic of the law in an even-handed way.  After all, justice is blind.  But if you wanted to challenge this assumption you could probably drive a cart and horses through it.  Judges are, after all, human.  I’d guess they have the same set of biases and blind spots as the rest of us.

A test

In 2010 Shai Danziger and Jonathan Levav carried out a study.

They were looking to see if judges’ decisions were based solely on laws, logic and facts.  Or if there were other factors that influenced their decisions?

They collected data from eight Israeli judges.  The judges presided over the parole boards of 4 of the largest prisons in Israel.  Danziger and Levav studied 1,112 decisions, looking for any signs of bias or discrimination.

They classified the judge’s decisions into two categories: accept or reject.  The judge either ruled in favour of the defendant or rejected the request for parole.  Then the researchers looked to see if anything unusual was affecting the outcome.

They took plenty of factors into account:

• The sex of the judge
• The experience of the judge
• The ethnic origin of the prisoner
• The sex of the prisoner
• The seriousness of the crime
• The time the criminal had served

They didn’t find anything surprising

Each of the judges had similar results.

The severity of the prisoner’s crime and prison time served did not exert an effect on rulings.  (Israel prisoners can only apply for parole once they have served half their sentence).

The sex and ethnicity of the judge or the prisoner didn’t make a difference either.

The researchers only found two statistically significant factors:

1. The number of prison terms the prisoner had served
2. The presence of a rehabilitation program

Judges don’t seem to like reoffenders.

The rulings were, as you would hope.  Consistent.

Except for one thing

In Israeli courts they have two breaks during the day; a morning snack and lunch time meal.

When the researchers plotted the judges’ decisions over time they looked like this:

The number of paroles awarded jumped significantly after the judges had had a break.

With the benefit of hindsight the outcome was obvious.  When a judge is well fed and rested he will concentrate more on the case.  He is more likely to consider the arguments put forward.  If the judge is tired and hungry he will have a greater tendency to go with the option that needs less thought.  To stick with the safe status quo and reject the parole request.

Who would have thought it?

Nobody would have guessed it.  You only get performance insights like that if you go and look.

You can’t transform what you don’t understand ~ Annette Franz

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Image by AO’D