IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v10y2018i4p36-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Punishment Severity Affects Jury Verdicts: Evidence from Two Natural Experiments

Author

Listed:
  • Anna Bindler
  • Randi Hjalmarsson

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of punishment severity on jury decision-making using archival data from London's Old Bailey Criminal Court from 1772 to 1871. We exploit two natural experiments in English history, resulting in sharp decreases in punishment severity: the offense-specific abolition of capital punishment and the temporary halt of penal transportation during the American Revolution. Using difference-in-differences to study the former and a pre-post design for the latter, we find a large, significant and permanent impact on jury behavior: juries are more likely to convict overall and across crime categories. Moreover, the effect size differs with defendants' gender.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna Bindler & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2018. "How Punishment Severity Affects Jury Verdicts: Evidence from Two Natural Experiments," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 36-78, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:36-78
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170214
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20170214
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=8310
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=mZhl8kLAiR3cW9-q-zIH9ttdgsozdC0r
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=lIePFo4FvEbDKZO8sgQqZsgfvHvN4q4w
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bindler, Anna L & Hjalmarsson, Randi, 2019. "The Impact of the First Professional Police Forces on Crime," CEPR Discussion Papers 14068, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Anna Bindler & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2019. "Path Dependency in Jury Decision Making," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(6), pages 1971-2017.
    3. Anna Bindler & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2020. "The Persistence of the Criminal Justice Gender Gap: Evidence from 200 Years of Judicial Decisions," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(2), pages 297-339.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • N43 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:36-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Michael P. Albert). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.