’The findings showed that people without racial animus or bias are affected by race as much as those with bias,’ said psychology Carol Dweck, one of the study authors.
When it comes to holding children accountable for crimes they commit, race matters.
According to a new study by Stanford psychologists, if people imagine a juvenile offender to be black, they are more willing to hand down harsher sentences to all juveniles.
"These results highlight the fragility of protections for juveniles when race is in play," said Aneeta Rattan , lead author of the study , which appears this week in the journal PloS ONE.
Historically, the courts have protected juveniles from the most severe sentences. It has been recognized that children are different from adults – they don’t use adult reasoning and don’t have impulse control to the same degree.
The Supreme Court has barred the death penalty for juveniles and, in 2010, said life without parole for non-homicide crimes violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Currently the court is considering two cases regarding juveniles involved in murders who were sentenced to life without parole. The justices are weighing whether they will further limit harsh sentences for young people.
The Stanford research was inspired, in part, by the cases most recently before the high court, said Jennifer Eberhardt , senior author of the study.
"The statistics out there indicate that there are racial disparities in sentencing juveniles who have committed severe crimes," said Eberhardt, associate professor of psychology. "That led us to wonder, to what extent does race play a role in how people think about juvenile status?"
The study involved a nationally representative sample of 735 white Americans. Only white participants were used because whites are statistically overrepresented on juries, in the legal field and in the judiciary.
The participants were asked to read about a 14-year-old male with 17 prior juvenile convictions who brutally raped an elderly woman. Half of the respondents were told the offender was black; the other half were told he was white. The difference in race was the only change between the two stories.
The researchers then asked the participants two questions dealing with sentencing and perception.
The first: To what extent do you support life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles when no one was killed?
The second: How much do you believe that juveniles who commit crimes such as these should be considered less blameworthy than an adult who commits a similar crime?
The study found that participants who had in mind a black offender more strongly endorsed a policy of sentencing juveniles convicted of violent crimes to life in prison without parole compared to respondents who had in mind a white offender.
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