AUTHOR=Aharoni Eyal , Kleider-Offutt Heather M. , Brosnan Sarah F. , Hoffman Morris B. 

TITLE=Nudges for Judges: An Experiment on the Effect of Making Sentencing Costs Explicit

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.889933

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2022.889933

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Judges are typically tasked to consider sentencing benefits but not costs. Previous research finds that both laypeople and prosecutors discount the costs of incarceration when forming sentencing attitudes, raising important questions about whether professional judges show the same bias during sentencing. To test this, we used a vignette-based experiment in which Minnesota state judges (<italic>N</italic> = 87) reviewed a case summary about an aggravated robbery and imposed a hypothetical sentence. Using random assignment, half the participants received additional information about plausible negative consequences of incarceration. As predicted, our results revealed a mitigating effect of cost exposure on prison sentence term lengths. Critically, these findings support the conclusion that policies that increase transparency in sentencing costs could reduce sentence lengths, which has important economic and social ramifications.</p>