Science AMA Series: Hi Reddit! We’re Dr Rhys Hester and Dr Todd Hartman. We published a paper on racial bias in criminal sentencing which highlights inequalities in incarceration rates and sentence lengths for minority offenders. Ask us anything!

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Hi Reddit,

I’m Dr Rhys Hester, a Criminologist and Research Fellow in Sentencing Law and Policy at the Robina Institute (link) at the University of Minnesota Law School. My research interests include criminal sentencing and criminal procedure.

And I’m Dr Todd Hartman, a lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute (link), UK. Prior to moving to the UK, I was Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government and Justice Studies at Appalachian State University. My current research focuses on political attitudes and intergroup relations.

We have just published a paper in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link) entitled, Conditional Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing: A Test of the Liberation Hypothesis from a Non-Guidelines State (insert link to paper). In the paper, we explored if, how and when race factors in criminal sentencing by analysing more than 17,000 decisions from South Carolina in the USA where there are no sentencing guidelines for decision makers.

Our research tested the "liberation hypothesis", which concerns how much flexibility judges have when sentencing, depending on the relevant case facts. The theory stipulates that when the case facts are unambiguous and the evidence clearly favours one side – for instance, for the most serious crimes and repeat criminal offenders – judges will have little choice but to impose severe punishment regardless of extra-legal factors.

However, in more ambiguous contexts and with less severe crimes, judges are "liberated" from these constraints and allowed to exercise discretion, allowing for extra-legal characteristics such as race to influence sentencing decisions.

We found that African-American offenders with limited criminal histories or charged with less severe crimes were particularly affected in these instances, with higher rates of incarceration and longer sentences compared to similar white offenders.

We hope our work will be helpful to researchers looking into criminal sentencing, as well as raising awareness more widely of potential bias in these criminal sentencing decisions.

We will be answering your questions from 11am (ET). Ask us anything!

">Science AMA Series: Hi Reddit! We’re Dr Rhys Hester and Dr Todd Hartman. We published a paper on racial bias in criminal sentencing which highlights inequalities in incarceration rates and sentence lengths for minority offenders. Ask us anything!