Social Science Watch: Crime Sentencing Edition

A new study examines disparities in sentencing, finding that blacks receive three month longer sentences from Republican appointed judges than similar non blacks while women receive two month shorter sentences from these judges.

The authors write, "These differences cannot be explained by other judge characteristics." Cannot as in impossible? Social science authors who treat study results as certain have questionable expertise.

Then the authors seem to contradict that claim with, "racial disparities by political affiliation are largely driven by drug offenses.” So is the judicial characteristic of being tough on drug offenders an explanation?

Did the authors tease out other alternative causal factors for sentencing differences:

1. accurate accounting of criminal history.
2. miscounting nonwhites as white.
3. geographical differences. Republican appointed judges in white, close knit towns probably sentence softer than Republican appointed judges from neoconservative areas having more black crime.
4. differences in insolent behavior by defendants in court.
5. disparities in willingness to plea bargain. It seems likely that judges give harsher sentences when the evidence is closer to slam dunk. Maybe whites with more evidence against them have already plea bargained since whites are more likely to tell the truth on self-reports. It is well known in law enforcement that blacks serving long prison terms demand DNA tests even when guilty because admitting guilt would cause them to lose face and hamper their innocent victim narratives.
6. disparities in crime circumstances. It seems likely that a car jacker murdering a driver will receive a harsher sentence than someone murdering his brother in the midst of a family argument.
7. Democratic appointed judges giving softer sentences than sentencing guidelines recommend.

A probability also exists that the study results are accurate. That's another argument against races living together. Multicultural Republican judges feigning race blindness are still biased. Getting accepted into multicultural political establishments requires biases on thousands of issues. Truth telling gets ostracized.

(Not surprisingly, the authors did not investigate jury nullification, law enforcement nullification, and unjust civil trial awards by progressives and Democrats, so-called restorative justice. Such individuals barely give lip service to equal treatment before the law. The probability of being caught and punished for crimes in diverse neighborhoods is low. And the probability of hate crime reporting, investigation, and conviction for hate crimes against whites is minuscule, but good luck finding scientists to investigate anti-white tyranny. There should be a study on how many more times likely a social scientists are to look for racial biases in whites than nonwhites.)