3 ms·
I find it surprising that, according to the article, attractiveness affects the severity of the sentence, but not whether someone is judged innocent or guilty.
by ilyagr 6y ago
I find it surprising that, according to the article, attractiveness affects the severity of the sentence, but not whether someone is judged innocent or guilty. If the former is true, the latter seems too good to be true.
If both are true, it's fascinating. We should then research the mechanism that makes judgements more fair, and see if we can't change the way the sentence is determined to match that.
- t-writescode 6y agoMy bet is that they didn’t test for that.
- jariel 6y agoIt is fascinating because the notion of guilt may be difficult to apprehend. It could be that the investigation of guilt is very carefully pursued, with a lot of rules, a lot of evidence. It could also be that for 'most cases' the outcome is actually fairly straight foward? Also, once someone is found to be 'guilty' - then we are free to 'loathe and pity then'. Whereas guilt/innocence is mostly a black and white affair, subject to objective guidance ... the sentencing may not be, which is to say, it's maybe hard to reference 'what is a little and what is a lot' in any given scenario, so are bias are more likely to run free.
- sukilot 6y agoRemember that by the time a case gets past indictment and plea bargain, almost every case is a conviction. Prosecutors aren't dumb. Variation in conviction is pre trial or even pre arrest, not at trial.