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The effect of ethnicity in the courtroom

Author(s): Lara Frumkin, Catriona Havard, Lee John Curley and Lystra Hagley-Dickinson

27/05/2024

Discrimination exists in our legal system, even though justice is meant to be blind. Courts do not treat everyone equally and biases influence how people perceive criminal justice users. Extralegal factors, such as race and ethnicity, affect how defendants and witnesses are perceived and how their guilt, innocence or reliability are assessed. 

The expectation is that unbiased judgement should be a central tenant in the English and Welsh system and verdicts should be given based on the evidence presented in court alone. However, there is evidence that ethnicity is one factor that can influence perceptions and decisions on how users are viewed. Indeed, individuals from certain racial backgrounds have received more negative consequences (i.e. they are perceived less favourably resulting in higher conviction rates and sentence lengths) compared to those from other backgrounds. This project will investigate how race and ethnicity influence courtroom perceptions and decisions, ultimately considering mechanisms to reduce such injustice. By conducting experimental studies and reviewing a previous UK criminal trial where race and ethnicity appears to have played a role, it will address the real and perceived inequalities experienced by ethnic minorities who find themselves as defendants or witnesses in the courts. 

This research aims to address how race and ethnicity influence injustices by understanding how and where such injustices occur and evidencing unequal treatment of ethnic minorities through applied psychological experiments and court case study. Findings from primary and secondary data sets we collect and analyse in these experiments and real-life criminal trial proceedings will be shared with stakeholders. The project uses a multimethod approach to investigate how race and ethnicity impact courtroom perceptions and decisions. 

An aim of this project is to test different modalities to measure the role race and ethnicity play in courtroom perceptions and decisions. In the applied psychological experiments, we used different stimuli to test different reactions to race.

  • Images of visible black and white defendants
  • Traditionally West African and Anglo-Saxon names
  • Accents as proxies of different ethnicities, communities and cultures

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Image by Katrin Bolovtsova via Pexels

We will also explore a case study from a recent criminal trial in the UK to determine where and how race and ethnicity may have been a factor in decision making in a more nuanced manner than an experimental study would allow. 

As part of this project, we would like to engage with stakeholders and advisors who could help us increase the relevance and potential impact of our work. This includes advising on directions for work and providing feedback to the research team on how to increase the generalisability of the work. Our research will provide findings to develop recommendations for best practice to reduce inequality in the courtroom. We are seeking advisors who may help address inequitable treatment in criminal courts with the goal of informing criminal justice employees and advocates of ways to increase equality related to ethnicity in the courtroom. 

Find out more on the Challenge page.

Authors

Prof Lara Frumkin works in the School of Psychology & Counselling at The Open University

Prof Catriona Havard works in the School of Psychology & Counselling at The Open University

Dr Lystra Hagley-Dickinson works in the Department of Social Policy and Criminology at The Open University

Dr Lee John Curley works in the Department of Psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University