Very happy to see this out. Joint with @kyrahanemaaijer.bsky.social and @econom.bsky.social

🚨 Broader effects of salience:
🔹 Appeals don’t alter findings, suggesting appellate courts lack effective checks.
🔹 Long-term economic impact: Moroccan defendants face a 40% decline in labor income 4 years post-sentencing due to incarceration and job struggles 📉 [7/7]

More interesting findings:
🔹No spillover effects on other minorities
🔹Courts with less-experienced judges in dealing with Moroccan defendants showed higher sensitivity to the shock, while more experienced judges had a more subdued response [6/7]

Main findings:
🔹No sig. changes in police & prosecutor decisions
🔹Judges handed out 60% longer sentences to Moroccan defendants (79% conditional on prison, ~3 months)
🔹Increased sentence length mirrored media intensity & duration linking Moroccan community to crime📺⚖️ [5/7]

🔹Shock = assassination of defense attorney Derk Wiersum in Sep 2019
🔹Wiersum defended a key witness in major case against "Mocro mafia", a Moroccan-Dutch led drug trafficking organization
🔹Event sparked extensive media attention, highlighting individuals of Moroc descent [4/7]

🔹Data: Admin data from Statistics Netherlands on all stages of the criminal justice system, incl. appeals, immigration background (1st to 3rd gen), and labor market outcomes.
🔹Method: Dif-in-dif design comparing minority vs. non-minority suspects before/after the shock. [3/7]

IZA Discussion Paper No. 17396: docs.iza.org/dp17396.pdf
[2/7]

📢 New working paper with @nadineketel.bsky.social and @econom.bsky.social

⚖️ We exploit a shock in minority salience to test the vulnerability of decisions in all stages of the Dutch criminal justice system to biases.
📈Sentence length for minority increases by 79% [🧵1/7]