The intersection of defendant gender and racialisation in a case of child neglect

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effects of defendant gender (man/woman) and racialisation (Indigenous/White) on Canadian mock jurors’ verdicts in a case of parent-perpetrated child neglect. The potential intensified negative consequences against Indigenous women, produced by the intersectionality of gender and racialisation, were of particular interest. Four hundred and one participants read a mock trial transcript, provided verdicts on two charges, and rated the defendant on a variety of adjectives. Logistic regressions revealed mock jurors were not influenced by the defendant’s gender or the interaction between the defendant’s gender and racialisation. Racialisation had an unpredicted influence, with an Indigenous defendant receiving fewer guilty verdicts. The adjective ratings moderated the effect of gender on verdicts, but not racialisation. Mock jurors were less likely to find a woman guilty when they held positive impressions of her. This study contributes to previous literature that suggests jurors’ verdicts may be influenced by extralegal factors.

KEYWORDS:

• Juror decision-making
• defendant gender
• defendant race
• intersectionality
• stereotypes

Data availability statement

The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly so due to the sensitive nature of the research, supporting data is not available.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the Carleton University Research Ethics Board-B (CUREB-B), ethics clearance ID #116244.

Notes

1 Supplemental materials are available online at https://osf.io/ye7zg/?view_only=5dc8640c6f5c4094bdb81272b081f229.

2 Items dropped from the first round: dominant, competitive, bold, spiritual, and poor. Item dropped from the second round: achievement-oriented.

3 Although juror gender was not a focus of this paper, we also conducted analyses with this factor, the results of which can be seen in supplemental materials.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under the Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s (CGS M); American Psychology-Law Society under the Diversity in Psychology and Law Research Award.