Minority Salience and Criminal Justice Decisions

Abstract

The criminal justice system is multi-staged and features several key agents whose decisions can significantly alter the course of individuals passing through it. These decisions could be influenced by the minority status of the suspects, affecting already under-privileged groups in the population. We document significant disparities by migration background in judicial decisions across all stages in the Dutch criminal justice system, which cannot be fully explained by a rich set of (legally) relevant case characteristics. We next exploit a sudden shock in salience of Moroccan migration background, to causally estimate discrimination against suspects with a Moroccan migration background. Sentencing outcomes for this group significantly worsened after the shock, increasing the length of prison sentence by 79 percent. We find heterogeneity by judge type, showing that judge characteristics can increase salience sensitivity, while experience can fight it. Finally, we show that this discrimination has effects on longer-term economic outcomes, with large reductions in labour income in subsequent years. Joint paper with Nadine Ketel and Olivier Marie.