Effects of Offenders' Age and Health on Sentencing Decisions

ABSTRACT

Two experiments investigated the effects of age and health on mock judges' sentencing decisions. The effects of these variables on length of prison sentence were examined in the context of offense severity and prior convictions. Experiment 1 involved a violent crime. Main effects were observed for age, health, offense severity and prior convictions. There was also an age by offense severity interaction. Experiment 2 involved a child sexual abuse case. Main effects were observed for health, offense severity, and prior convictions. In addition, an age by offense severity by prior convictions interaction effect was found. Thus, across both experiments, the age leniency effect was moderated by legal factors, suggesting that extra-legal factors affect sentencing in the context of legal factors. Further, for both offenses, offenders in poor health received shorter sentences than offenders in good health, suggesting that health deserves further research attention as an extra-legal variable.

Keywords:

• age
• defendant
• health
• mock-jury decisions
• psychology and law
• sentencing

Notes

1. The specific offence studied in this experiment is “sexual assault of a child under 13” as covered by the Sexual Offences Act 2004 S.7 for England and Wales. As much of the psychological literature uses the term child sexual abuse to include this type of offence, we have also adopted this term.

2. The high percentage of older offenders who are imprisoned for sexual offences as opposed to other offences does not contradict our hypothesis that there may be a leniency effect for sentencing of this age group: Although it shows that for this age group sex offences lead more frequently to imprisonment than other offences, it crucially does not consider older offenders in comparison to younger offenders. Therefore it is impossible to draw any inference from it as to whether sexual offenders over age 60 are sentenced more or less leniently than younger sexual offenders given a comparable offence.

3. Throughout the materials the cases were referred to only as “sexual assault,” and not as “child sexual abuse,” in order to avoid confusion of participants.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mandeep K. Dhami

Katrin U. Mueller-Johnson, PhD, is a lecturer in Applied Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the intersection of psychology and law with a special interest in the effects of aging on participants in the criminal justice process. Mandeep K. Dhami, PhD, is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. Her background is in psychology and criminology, and her research interests are in judgment and decision making, and criminal justice. She is on the editorial boards of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and Judgment and Decision Making, and is Fellow of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.