Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are larg...

The majority of the states in the USA have a process to project prison populations for the purpose of planning adequate capacity. Typical time series methods are ineffective because they do not take into account factors like sentence length, prior criminal history, revocations of community supervision, and legislative changes. Discrete event simulation has proven to be a viable alternative. The...

Much debate exists surrounding the applicability of genetic information in the courtroom, making the psychological processes underlying how people consider this information important to explore. This article addresses how people think about different kinds of causal explanations in legal decision-making contexts. Three studies involving a total of 600 Mechanical Turk and university participants...

This paper explores current and future possible uses of algorithms in sentencing assesses the likely impact their use on penal legitimacy. The focus is England Wales, although examples from United States, where more extensive, are also considered. An understanding legitimacy grounded procedural fairness used, with a particular two key factors affecting fairness: bias transparency. It concluded ...