“Judicial Scarring”

The title of this post is the title of this new empirical paper authored by Karthik Srinivasan available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

I document that experienced decision makers can be influenced by irrelevant events in a high stakes setting, felony sentencing in Cook County.  Using a stacked difference-in-differences design, I estimate that judges hand down sentences that are 13% longer after sentencing a first degree murder.  The effect is twice as large for defendants who resemble the murderer along the dimensions of race and charge severity.  The bias affects 6% of defendants on an ongoing basis and temporarily increases the Black sentencing penalty by 91%.