Legalized judicial racism…

how many baristas have PhDs? 30%. That means nothing, and a degree in criminology does not give you any insight into how an actual legal dispute gets resolved. You assert that “individual level variance” , (which appears to be term you made up as there is no recognized definition or even use of the term anywhere) provides the basis for the legitimacy of your referenced studies. But your flawed example gives you away. I gave you a small list of variables that are inherent in our judicial system, by no means complete, and you try to compare that to unemployment. Unemployment has very few variables, and frankly, it doesn’t have any moving parts. That is primarily a study of data in number form.

claiming there is bias in sentencing has a shit more amount of variables, all the while they are moving parts. First and foremost, when you’re claiming a bias in sentencing, that cannot be done unless you’re doing some type of comparative analysis. There is no such analysis that I am aware of for unemployment. If you’re going to suggest, by way of analysis, that Judge Jones gave a stiffer sentence to black defendants, then, he did to white defendants, then you need to know the specifics of the charges against both defendants, their backgrounds, what mitigating factors were involved. None of that is going to be captured by your data analysis that you are citing. Instead, you were looking at General statistical data, showing the number of years Black people are sentenced versus the number of years. White people are setenced. But that is so simplistic it does not provide any guidance as to why that occurred. It is the why that matters, which you don’t find in any detail in any analysis for unemployment. There is no general statistical data that you could analyze to determine why Judge Jones gave a stiffer sentence to a black defendant, versus a white defendant. You would actually have to pick up both case files to look at the facts. The sentencing is fact dependent. Another variable that isn’t captured by looking at simple statistical conviction data.

Part of what makes our legal system both good and bad is that the judges have a great deal of discretion in sentencing, for the most part. That discretion can’t be measured in any data analysis. In fact, in simplistic terms, one could argue that judicial discretion eliminates any general conclusion for bias unless you go on a case by case basis. Another problem of your global study is that you’re comparing apples to oranges pretty much across the board. You can’t compare a judges sentence in Chicago for robbery with a judges sentence in Baton Rouge for robbery. Each state has its own laws, and own sentencing guidelines. What may be a minimum sentence in one state, may be a maximum sentence in another state. What may be a crime in one state, may not be a crime in another state. What may be a felony in one state may be a misdemeanor in another. This list could go on and on. Your PhD folks do not have the resources, skills or direction to gather all of this data. IMO, even if you were able to capture all of the data from every judge, from every courthouse in the United States, on every case, and had the world‘s most powerful computer, I still do not believe that any reasonable conclusion could be reached on bias based upon all of that data. It would be nothing but speculation. The facts which go into a criminal conviction aren’t as simple as “is x employed or not.”

imagine you have a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle. You have no idea what the puzzle is portraying. If you put together 100 pieces of the puzzle, do you think you would have a clue as to what the other 4900 pieces of the puzzle show would you be able to draw a conclusion based upon those few pieces of the puzzle? Now imagine that that same 5000 piece puzzle that you were trying to put together is constantly changing its pieces. That is our judicial system. Every day, dozens, if not, hundreds of judges retire, and they are replaced by new judges. It is always a moving system. New district, attorneys, new defense, attorneys, even new laws.

so I stand by my opinion that the reference point for your opinion is crap.

 

tinfoil opinions are hilarious. You think everyone there was part of a bee hive, with queen bee Trump giving directions through pheromones. How cute.

 

I never claimed you said it, but that’s the implication of your assertion. For you to suggest that you or anyone else knows what the hundred thousand plus people in Washington DC were actually thinking on January 6 is laughable. Were there idiots on that day trying to create havoc? Yes. Were the vast majority of people in Washington DC that day committing criminal acts? absolutely not. Was it an insurrection? Absolutely not.

 

I know eight people who have received their PhD’s over the last 25 years. Two of them worked for Starbucks after graduation. They have since moved on to better jobs, neither one of which has anything to do with their degree.

I did not say you invented the words, I said you invented the term. If you Google that term, you will come up with nothing. Perhaps you’ll have better luck than me, but I haven’t found that term used in any study, or in any discussion regarding analysis of data, or anything else for that matter. I understood what you were trying to state based upon the word choice, but your example was rather nonsensical in my mind.

I stand by my assessment of using somebody with a PhD in criminology to try to ascertain the necessary information to reach the conclusion you’re attempting to reach. Somebody with a degree in criminology would have little idea of the minutia of data needed to analyze criminal sentencing for bias, but more to the point of what I posted, you would need hundreds, if not, thousands of criminologist, working for months in order to be able to ascertain the data to make any reasonable conclusion. You cannot compare a criminal conviction in Chicago with one in New Orleans, unless you were looking at the underlying facts, and also have an understanding of the applicable law.

it’s not that a PhD in criminology is less equipped, necessarily, than any other profession, it is the sheer volume of variable data needed to come to a conclusion that there is bias by judges in sentencing. Every single defendant who could be a subject of this study that you’re discussing, would have to be reviewed independently. Otherwise, you’re just making assumptions, which I know people who like to farm data, and create graphs love to do, but assumptions are meaningless.

to summarize my point once again, you can’t make assumptions about any sentencing by a court. There are just too many factors and variables, and a criminologist wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface, unless they live in a courthouse with a particular judge for a period of time. And you would need a lot of those people in all of the different courthouses studying each individual judge. Perhaps, you are thinking of the claim of systemic bias in incarceration, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. That is its own topic. One could argue that more Black people are in jail because they’re being arrested more often, or charged more often than their counterparts of other races. I don’t believe that that is true either. But sentencing is done by a living judge, not a system.

On your final point, I never claimed I am an expert on research. But I am an expert on the functioning of the judicial system, and that is what we were talking about here. You are trying to come to a conclusion about the judicial system, claiming that your research can identify bias in sentencing. I’m claiming that there is no amount of Feasible research to ever reach such a conclusion.

 

you are ignoring the point of my post. Bias in sentencing requires the comparison of identical or near identical convictions. Those two data points are judicial unicorns. You can’t conclude that judge Judy’s 5 year sentence for 3rd degree burglary for a black man in NY is comparable to Judge Dredd’s 3 year sentence for a white man’s burglary in California (which doesn’t even have third-degree burglary) without knowing dozens of factors, many of which are not found in the file, which you don’t even necessarily get access to. It is not feasible and if you think otherwise you are just wrong. Unless you have worked for the State Attorney (check), clerked for a judge (check) and/or practiced law (check) you can have all the experience in the world on analytic data, but if you can’t get the data you are pulling your pud.

Have a magical day.

 

So in your mind you can show bias in sentencing without actually comparing anything? SMH. Do you even know the definition of bias or the actual subject matter of this thread? Everything in your last post is wrong. Everything! I will give you credit for trolling and wasting my time.

 

Yeah, but all bias is a comparative because THAT IS THE DAMN DEFINITION OF THE WORD! I don’t have to know anything about statistics to know a snake oil salesman when I see him. You are way out of your league here. Chow