Making Sense of Sentencing: How Trust in the Criminal Justice System Impacts Preferences for Prosecutorial Discretion

Abstract

Psychologists and behavioral scientists have long established the relationships between trust and discretion within institutions, yet none have applied such theories to the prosecutorial discretion established in sentencing policies. The present research seeks to understand if people’s preferences for prosecutorial discretion in sentencing policies may be impacted by their overall trust in the criminal justice system. People do not passively observe policies, instead, they engage in a sensemaking process to try and understand the policymaker’s intentions, and what kind of decision they should make as a result. Such a sensemaking process is often triggered by trust. People also tend to prefer discretion to be used either conservatively or leniently, and both uses have their own set of benefits and risks. Additionally, the way discretion is exercised impacts how people perceive the person with the discretionary power and if they trust them. As such, I hypothesize that when people have low trust in the criminal justice system, they prefer prosecutors to have less discretion in sentencing decisions. Yet, when people have high trust in the criminal justice system, they will prefer that prosecutors have more discretion over sentencing. Across three experimental studies, results consistently established that people with low trust in the criminal justice system preferred prosecutors to have limited discretion, while people with higher trust in the criminal justice system preferred prosecutors to have more complete discretion. Study 1 established the correlational relationship between trust and prosecutorial discretion, across different types of crimes of varying severity. Study 2 experimentally manipulated trust across six different conditions. Study 3 expanded upon Study 2 by also experimentally manipulating trust across the same six conditions, but participants were told that if a prosecutor had limited discretion, the prosecutor had to give the maximum sentence. Participants in decreased trust conditions still preferred limited discretion, even though that meant prosecutors had to sentence the most punitive option. These results have several crucial implications for the criminal justice system and policymakers, and future research should continue to explore the intricacies of the relationship between trust and prosecutorial discretion.