Or were judges being too nice? We know there was bias, but we still don’t know when bias occurred.
I feel the need to point out that the observation does not necessarily result in a bias. We literally know nothing about the legal system’s arrangments for parolees here other than this single data point.
It could be, for example, that there is an understanding that the review boards arrange cases before judges based on the boards’ estimate of the potential parolee’s worthiness of release; with the ‘worst offenders’ being later in a giving hearing bracket. This would also take the shape of a linear decline in parole-granting rates—but would not represent any bias in the judge’s reasoning.
(In case this is not clear, as I appear to sometimes have difficulty communicating with others on this site: My only positional claim here is that we do not know if this is actually a bias at all, as we have too little data to make such a definitive statement. All else is merely explanation of this stance.)
I thumbed you up because you were technically correct about the fact that just because positive judgements drop doesn’t mean there’s a bias.
However, there is some extra data in this economist article on the same study to support the idea that there weren’t factors in the arrangements of parole candidates that would account for such a drop:
To be sure, mealtimes were not the only thing that predicted the outcome of the rulings. Offenders who appeared prone to recidivism (in this case those with previous convictions) were more likely to be turned down, as were those who were not in a rehabilitation programme. Happily, neither the sex nor the ethnicity of the prisoners seemed to matter to the judges. Nor did the length of time the offenders had already spent in prison, nor even the severity of their crimes (as assessed by a separate panel of legal experts). But after controlling for recidivism and rehabilitation programmes, the meal-related pattern remained.
I feel the need to point out that the observation does not necessarily result in a bias. We literally know nothing about the legal system’s arrangments for parolees here other than this single data point.
It could be, for example, that there is an understanding that the review boards arrange cases before judges based on the boards’ estimate of the potential parolee’s worthiness of release; with the ‘worst offenders’ being later in a giving hearing bracket. This would also take the shape of a linear decline in parole-granting rates—but would not represent any bias in the judge’s reasoning.
(In case this is not clear, as I appear to sometimes have difficulty communicating with others on this site: My only positional claim here is that we do not know if this is actually a bias at all, as we have too little data to make such a definitive statement. All else is merely explanation of this stance.)
I thumbed you up because you were technically correct about the fact that just because positive judgements drop doesn’t mean there’s a bias.
However, there is some extra data in this economist article on the same study to support the idea that there weren’t factors in the arrangements of parole candidates that would account for such a drop: