Citation

Pina-Sánchez J, Roberts JV, Sferopoulos D. Br. J. Criminol. 2019; 59(3): 718-736.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/bjc/azy062

PMID

unavailable

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.

Language: en