Jose Pina-Sánchez 🇪🇺

If racist judges are systematically more (or less) punitiveness then using judge fixed effects will bias our estimate of judicial prejudice

This is not the case in jurisdictions with random allocation of cases, but yes, it could happen elsewhere if that hypothesis you put forward holds, which is why we encourage researchers to think about the causal role of the variables they use as controls, and why context matters in making that call.

We do not observe judicial prejudice, that is why we have to rely on the association between the offender trait and sentence severity as our proxy estimand. The moment we condition on judge characteristics we might be explaining away some of the prejudice that we seek to estimate.

This is another good example of the benefits of cross-disciplinarity, I do not have a clue about the mechanics of the sentencing process in the US federal courts - beyond the basics - but the Lawyer in the team (Melissa Hamilton) is an expert on that, having interviewed US judges herself.

Good question, and I guess a bit in the grey area: we did not use a hurdle model as it is our understanding that according to the US federal sentencing guidelines deciding whether to impose a prison sentence and its length represent just one simultaneous decision, rather than 2, one after the other.

yes, that is what we see here too osf.io/preprints/so... (currently being expanded, hopefully to be published next year), in Spain and other Civil Law jurisdictions sentencing seems quite algorithmic, apparently little consideration for how time in prison is felt more punitively by women.

The best example I have of real cross-disciplinary research. I got stucked writting this paper countless times. I just reached the limit of my knowledge repeatedly and could not take it forward. Might have abandoned it altogether without Peter (Epidemiologist) and Melissa's (Lawyer) contributions.

European Alternatives We help you find European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS products.

Seems like a good time to remind my fellow Europeans that there are alternatives to US oligarch technology

european-alternatives.eu

In my paper Sample Size Justification I discuss 6 approaches to justifying sample sizes. The focus of the paper is to teach people the tools they need to be honest when they explain where their sample size comes from. I know, so radical ;) online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...

I've been exposed to enough peer review that I think we can look at two classes of reviewers:

1. Constructive peer review
2. Adversarial peer review

I'm looking at this mostly from a psychology/methodology perspective (but wonder what other fields experience)

🧵 1/

How the UK’s dependency on cars slows down the economy Clogged up Britain

car dependency is crippling the UK theconversation.com/how-the-uks-... "for the UK to be more like Singapore, the government needs to make motorists pay much more for their car use. To be more like the Netherlands, it must take away their space"

Starmer gave a talk in my school when he was Brexit shadow secretary. He described how on the wake of the referendum he went to hug his daughter to tell her how the world had changed for ever, and went on to defend international cooperation, and encouraged us all to fight for it. Duplicitous fuck.

El martes tenemos esto

Trial by jury in England & Wales has a mythical status. It's seen as the pinnacle of adversarial justice: a judge decides the law and 12 jurors decide the facts. But in reality? Jury trials account for less than 1% of criminal cases.

Someone should tell them they are the party in power.

What is Labour’s Pride In Place Programme, and will it be Enough to Build a Good Society? Why Labour must also connect local efforts under the Pride In Place programme to a national story of renewal.

Britain has lost over 75% of its informal meeting spaces since 1980, pushing people into isolation, more time spent online, and towards the far right.

Can new policy 'Pride In Place' turn it around?

politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/what-is...

By Sam Taylor Hill

today's sunset: 15.49.

A very different vibe compared to the more sinister, but far cooler, Bradford coat of arms.

@openresleeds.bsky.social, let's do this in Leeds!

Yes, a sneaky form of indirect discrimination, that scenario is also covered in the paper.

Crimversations: "Estimating Discrimination in Sentencing: Distinguishing between Good and Bad Controls" This is a podcast based on the article, "Estimating Discrimination in Sentencing: Distinguishing between Good and Bad Controls" (available at https://doi.org/10.21428/cb6ab371.3fba9264). We create "cr...

Came across this based on our latest paper: odysee.com/@crimconsort...
It is truly amazing how much better these LLMs are at explaining ones own ideas. I was recently given 90 minutes to present this paper, yet I bet had I played this 6 minutes clip that would have been way more effective.

This (free) event may be of interest our members: “Towards new horizons of scholarly publishing” in Nijmegen on 5-6 February '26. Topics: future of academic publishing, Diamond Open Access, and challenges ahead. See: www.horizondiamond.nl

#AcademicSky #PsychSciSky

Not read yet, but this paper looks of interest to people in my orbit.

Questioning the practice of throwing every covariate under the sun into your models. Here, in a legal context, which is interesting.

Shareholders

Background of Woodhouse Moor. Smiling photo of Dr Barker in a circle. #News flare. Text reads: “We know that safer parks are not just about better lighting or design - they’re about people. This training gives staff and volunteers the confidence to act when they see or hear something that isn’t right. It empowers communities to look out for each other.”

80% of UK women have experienced public harassment, yet 75% report that no one stepped in.

Dr @annabarker.bsky.social's research has helped hundreds of park staff and volunteers across the UK to be trained in how to spot, safely challenge, and prevent harassment.

Read more👇
tinyurl.com/99px5urh

UK net migration falls sharply with drop in arrivals for work and study Provisional figures for net migration to the UK show levels dropped to 204,000 in the year to June 2025.

Fewer workers. Fewer international students. More people leaving.

A "step in the right direction" according to the PM.

Impossible to take PM/govt seriously on growth if they are deliberately reducing it (and making the fiscal position worse) *as a matter of policy*.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

#CriminalJustice and #Legal scholars working on #empirical topics, do submit your work here. I had a fantastic experience, thorough reviews, short waiting time, great communication with the editorial team, and it is all 💎OA, so my university doesn't have to send £3K to Springer Nature stakeholders.

In short, we need to move on from a positivist to a post-positivist perspective. Stop presenting findings as point estimates (which are always, irredemiably, going to be wrong) and instead offer a band of likely values.

However, that is not to say that judicial prejudice can never be detected. In certain cases, when that prejudice is present and the model uncertainty is narrow enough, we can. See example for the case of disparities against Black offenders.