Pina-Sánchez, J, Roberts, JV and Sferopoulos, D (2019) Does the Crown Court Discriminate Against Muslim-Named Offenders? A Novel Investigation Based on Text Mining Techniques. British Journal of Criminology, 59 (3). azy062. pp. 718-736. ISSN 0007-0955
Abstract
Most research in sentencing discrimination in the United Kingdom has relied on aggregate analyses comparing disparities by ethnic group. These studies fail to consider differences in the individual characteristics of the cases processed. To circumvent the lack of official data, we scraped sentence records stored in a commercial website, from which a sample of 8,437 offenders sentenced to custody in the Crown Court from 2007 to 2017 was generated. Using the names of the offenders, we have been able to classify 8.6 per cent of our sample as having a traditional Muslim name. We find that Muslim-named offenders received sentences 9.8 per cent longer than the rest of the sample. However, this difference disappeared once we accounted for the type of offence and other key case characteristics.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Crown copyright 2018. This article contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/). |
Keywords: | sentencing; discrimination; Muslim; Crown Court; data scraping |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Law (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Nov 2018 11:55 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:35 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/bjc/azy062 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:138415 |