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Stereotypes and the Administration of Justice

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Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action

Abstract

Stereotypes play a pervasive role in the administration of justice, influencing police stops and searches, the use of force, bail and sentencing decisions, juror behavior and selection, felony disenfranchisement, and attitudes toward mass incarceration. We provide a selective survey of the literature on stereotypes and criminal justice and discuss implications for witness cooperation, homicide clearance rates, and rates of murder victimization.

Prepared for the Handbook of Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action, edited by Ashwini Deshpande. We thank Ashwini Deshpande, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, and Morgan Williams Jr. for extremely helpful comments and suggestions, and Julie Seager, Emily Cai, and Olivia Bobrownicki for research assistance. Sethi thanks the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for fellowship support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Brendan O’Flaherty

  2. Department of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Santa Fe Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Rajiv Sethi

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  1. Brendan O’Flaherty
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  2. Rajiv Sethi
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Correspondence to Brendan O’Flaherty or Rajiv Sethi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Ashwini Deshpande

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O’Flaherty, B., Sethi, R. (2022). Stereotypes and the Administration of Justice. In: Deshpande, A. (eds) Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4016-9_10-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4016-9_10-1

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