Pros And Cons Of Implicit Bias

This past legislative session saw a major win for the wrongly convicted with H.B. 48. H.B. 48 creates a commission to review convictions after exoneration and aims to prevent wrongful conviction. This bill is a supported across the political spectrum on the part of author Ruth Jones McClendon (D) and Sen. Rodney Ellis (D) along with joint authors Rep. Jeff Leach (R), Rep. David Simpson (R), Rep. Abel Herrero (D), Rep. Joe Moody (D) and The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Effective Justice.

The book Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court written by Amy Bach reflects upon “ordinary injustice” that members of society fall victim to by the American criminal justice system. In short, the phrase “ordinary injustice” comes from the improper acts that have become second nature to court officials but has yet to be explained and resolved by other actors in the court. It is noted in the text that “ordinary injustice results when a community of legal professionals becomes so accustomed to a pattern of lapses that they can no longer see their role in them” (Bach 2). This recurring pattern has been easy to identify by outsiders but difficult to handle by insiders of the court. Bach supports this idea by making clear that, “proving mistakes, both visible and invisible, [is] very difficult in the criminal justice system, even for those who are insiders” (258).

Almost every day, we hear about justice being served upon criminals and we, as a society, feel a sense of relief that another threat to the public has been sentenced to a term in prison, where they will no longer pose a risk to the world at large. However, there are very rare occasions where the integrity of the justice system gets skewed and people who should not have been convicted are made to serve heavy prison sentences. When word of this judicial misstep reaches the public, there is social outcry, and we begin to question the judicial system for committing such a serious faux pas.

Race is one of the most controversial topics when speaking of bias, and still to this day race is occasionally believed to sway the judicial system’s decisions. A recent statistic proved that less than 5 years ago in North Carolina more than 52% of potential black jurors were cut, or peremptory challenged, meaning they removed from a case without reason (S.M.). Not only do jurors experience discrimination but suspects on trial have also suffered for decades. Evidence shows judges sentence black convicts to 20%

As behavior is manifested daily in classrooms, teachers are frequently asked to make quick judgements while under tremendous stress. Teachers who feel prepared and confident will have already prepared their myriad of responses for the complexities of student behavior, especially from students who show the greatest diversity, and rely on objective reasoning when making behavioral decisions. (Bryan, Day-Vines, Griffin, & Moore-Thomas, 2012). Conversely, teachers who are overwhelmed and have feelings of inadequacy will fuel their decision making and behavioral judgements form a source of anxiety, fear, and control, and quickly turn to subjective reasoning when making behavioral decisions (Bryan et al., 2012). In addition, subjective reasoning can draw on and fuel implicit biases and manifest itself inappropriately to minor behavior (Forsyth, Biggar, Forsyth, & Howat, 2015).

Jurors' understanding of the law is typically undeveloped, and therefore their schemas for legal concepts are often correspondingly incorrect or undeveloped. For this reason, existing jury instructions, which are typically given to jurors after the presentation of evidence, do little to counteract or correct jurors' undeveloped or misinformed schemas. Hence, when developing jury instructions, drafters should not only consider whether they are comprehensible, but also emphasize on whether they could provide guidance to help jurors navigate through the discrepancies between their own concepts and the proper definitions of the law. Based on findings from psychology studies, lawyers and judges should attempt to develop jurors' schemas for the relevant legal concepts to make them better organized and more accessible, allowing for more thoughtful judgment and more accurate decision-making. To accomplish this, jurors should be provided with both well-written jury instructions and pre-trial explanations of the applicable law, including examples of how the law applies and to which they can analogize the facts of the present case. Judges could also help jurors to overcome schema perseverance by asking them to consider the evidence from both sides and to attempt to create plausible explanations for both sides of a case. These steps might help counteract inappropriate preexisting schemas, activate legally appropriate schemas, and result in better decision-making by jurors. Last but not least, the above recommendations for combating biased schemas need to be thoroughly tested and confirmed by empirical studies before they could be

Wrongful conviction is an issue that has plagued the Canadian Justice System since it came to be. It is an issue that is hard to sort out between horrific crimes and society’s desire to find truth and justice. Incidences of wrongful conviction hit close to home right here in Saskatchewan as well as across the entire nation. Experts claim “each miscarriage of justice, however, deals a blow to society’s confidence in the legal justice system” (Schmalleger, Volk, 2014, 131). Professionals in the criminal justice field such as police, forensic analyst, and prosecutors must all be held accountable for their implications in wrongful convictions. There are several reasons for wrongful convictions such as racial bias, false confessions, jailhouse

The United States prides itself on having robust, deeply entrenched measures implemented across its core agencies, including the police and criminal justice system, to safeguard against wrongfully convicting people who, after further reflection, are factually found to be innocent. As citizens, we have been educated to trust, among other things, that our systems protect the notions that one is innocent until proven guilty and that prosecution must prove any charges beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet, wrongful convictions are more prevalent than we might think. In particular, the publicity of hundreds of cases over the last few decades has put a spotlight on this indisputable

For a society that is greatly influenced by Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds and Bones, a confession of the offender is seen as an ultimate checkmate of the case because it implies the guilt of the confessor. Thus, a confession, especially the ones with detailed account and perfect representation of emotions (Leo, 2008), outweighs the evidences of innocence and stirs the case against the accused (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985). People believe that they are open-minded about the possibility of false confession but in reality, the public, law enforcers and justice officials have biases that often infer guilt to the suspect instead of investigating for the truth, which leads to wrongful conviction. According to Leo and Drizin (2004), false confession is the primary cause of law miscarriage (Leo and Drizzin, 2004). False confessors lived many years in jail before being exonerated while others remain imprisoned (Leo and Drizzin, 2004).

Implicit biases are “‘habits of mind,’ learned over time through repeated personal experiences and cultural socialization, which can be activated unintentionally, often outside of one’s own awareness, and are difficult to control” (Burgess, Beach & Saha, 2017, p. 372). Implicit bias is seen in the medical field partly because of the time pressure of medical visits, and the reliance on stereotypes in situations of high stress. It is difficult to study implicit bias because of social desirability. No doctor wants to admit that they are biased and, as a result, they are going to do their best to demonstrate the socially desirable response of being non-biased. However, research shows that bias and prejudice from health care providers toward patients exists, and leads to poorer care related to the assessment of cardiovascular risk and whether or not a patient is referred for additional treatment (Stepanikova, I., 2012). Even health care providers from one of the best health care organizations in the world, Mayo Clinic, struggle with

Legal uncertainty, much like the high costs of litigation, is directly related to the American style of a “trial by jury”. Kagan and many of the author’s in The Social Organization of Law mention the unpredictability of juries. They do not leave a written record, which means they do not have to explain their decision, they do not have a written record from other juries to follow, and there is no guaranteed consistency across courts and across time periods. Jurors are often inexperienced in the workings of civil and criminal law, they might be completely uninterested in fully participating in the process, and jurors can hold a bias against certain races, genders, religions, or other specific types of people. Elizabeth Perry, in The Social Organization of the Law, recounts how much blatant emphasis her group of jurors put on race, and Michael Weiss and Karl Zinsmeister cite a numerous amount of other instances where race has played a vital role in the jurors’ conviction of a defendant. The lack of a written record from the jury coupled with the bias and inexperience of some jurors can make it very difficult for a litigant to predict the possible rewards or consequences the could receive from the legal process. When citizens cannot reasonably predict the outcomes of disputes and the cost of these disputes are so high, it leads them to utilize other forms of

During recent studies from several researchers it has been concluded that there is a fault within our criminal justice system. Researchers discovered there is a high wrongful conviction rate within the United States judicial system. After, extensive research, it was found that wrongful convictions are caused by eyewitness error, false confessions, flawed forensic science, an informant, bad lawyering, and government misconduct. Without a doubt, this issue has shocked society, due to the fact we rely on the system for pure justice. Within my findings, it is apparent that victims of wrongful convictions suffer numerous affects when

To provide high quality and equitable care, it is important that health care providers reduce and become aware of their biases. Biases can be divided into those under conscious control, explicit biases, and those that are held at an unconscious level, implicit biases (Doyle). We have made great strides with reducing explicit bias by banning discrimination and reducing prejudice, but we need to continue working towards reducing and becoming aware of our implicit biases. In reflecting on my own implicit biases, I have become aware that my implicit biases can negatively affect my ability to deliver high quality patient care in the future by impacting my relationship with patients, increasing the probability of misdiagnosis, and influencing treatment

Since 1923, when Judge Learned Hand said that the American judicial system “has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted,” the issue of wrongful conviction has been acknowledged to man (Halstead, 1992; Huff, Rattner, Sagarin, & MacNamara, 1986). After the judge made his innocuous statements, serious study of this phenomenon began. Contrary to the statement the judge made, time and technology have revealed that an unquantifiable number of wrongfully convicted persons have served prison terms and even been executed for crimes they did not commit and some that did not even occur. Research into wrongful conviction was virtually nonexistent until Professor Edward Brochard of Yale University published his book Convicting the Innocent in 1932. This book documented 65 such cases, addressed the legal causes of miscarriage, and offered suggestions to reform. Subsequently, numerous other researchers began conducting case studies and publishing findings that affirmed that wrongful conviction represents a systematic problem within the American judicial process (Huff, 2002).

Evidently, because of the presence of bias and human error, an innocent person has reason to fear the justice system. This statement is even more logical considering the overwhelming examples in the media of the imprisonment of innocent minorities. Additionally, the recurring problem of human error only makes the entire judicial system appear nerve-wracking to an even greater extent. As mentioned previously, Samuel Gross, along with other employees of the National Registry of Exonerations, speculate how many innocent prisoners have gone unnoticed. Hopefully, if more people are aware of the countless individuals who are punished for crimes they have never committed, people will recognize the substantial reason there is to fear the justice system.