Ethnic Bias in Criminal Sentencing in China

• In Event: The Politics of Judicial Decision-making in the Developing World

Abstract

This paper presents the first analysis of ethnic bias in sentencing patterns in the People's Republic of China. An original dataset of over 14,000 drug trafficking, transport, and possession cases in Yunnan province shows that Chinese judges routinely depart from recommended sentencing guidelines. An exact matching approach suggests the presence of ethnic bias in the Chinese criminal justice system-- on average, ethnic minority defendants have sentences that are a few months longer than Han defendants that have committed equivalent crimes. Further analysis reveals that this difference may in part be driven by judge assignment. The Chinese system fosters coethnic judge assignment, whereby judges that are minorities are disproportionately assigned to cases with minority defendants, largely because of language issues and to facilitate court proceedings. Yet minority judges appear to be harsher than Han judges, and coethnic assignment effectively induces an ethnic bias against minority defendants.

Authors

• Rory Truex, Princeton University

• Yue Hou, University of Pennsylvania