The Fall of Capital Punishment and the Rise of Prisons: How Punishment Severity Affects Jury Verdicts

60 Pages Posted: 16 Mar 2017

See all articles by Anna Bindler

Anna Bindler

University College London

Randi Hjalmarsson

University of Gothenburg

Date Written: March 2017

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of punishment severity on jury decision-making using a large archival data set from the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London from 1715 to 1900. We take advantage of two natural experiments in English history, which result in sharp decreases in punishment severity: the offense specific abolition of capital punishment in the 1800s and the temporary and unexpected halt of penal transportation during the American Revolution. Using a difference-in-differences design to study the former and a pre-post design to study the latter, we find that decreasing expected punishment (especially via the end of the death penalty), had a large, significant and permanent impact on jury behavior, generally leading to the jury being "harsher". Moreover, we find that the size of the effect differs with defendants' gender and criminal history. These results raise concerns about the impartiality of juries as well as the implicit assumption often made when designing and evaluating criminal justice policies today - that the chance of conviction is independent of the harshness of the penalty.

Keywords: conviction, crime, death penalty, English history, expected punishment, jury, punishment severity, verdict

JEL Classification: H00, K14, K40, N00, N43, N93

Suggested Citation

Bindler, Anna and Hjalmarsson, Randi, The Fall of Capital Punishment and the Rise of Prisons: How Punishment Severity Affects Jury Verdicts (March 2017). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP11888, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2934200

Anna Bindler (Contact Author)

University College London ( email )

Gower Street
London, WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

Randi Hjalmarsson

University of Gothenburg ( email )

Box 640
Vasagatan 1, E-building, floor 5 & 6
Göteborg, 40530
Sweden

HOME PAGE: http://economics.handels.gu.se/english/staff/professors/randi-hjalmarsson

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