Tracing the Influence of Intersecting Social Identities on Judicial Discretion and the Sentencing Process

• In Event: Racial and Intersectional Inequality in Courts and Sentencing

Abstract

Scholars often highlight important distinctions between mass shootings, hate crimes, and acts of domestic terrorism. The social and legal consequences stemming from mass shootings are vastly different to those resulting from domestic terrorism or hate-motivated shootings. Recent findings from an analysis of the United States Mother Jones Mass Shooting Dataset have highlighted multiple conceptual and legal discrepancies between cases currently classified as mass shootings and the formal criteria and subsequent charging of these same events. Less than two-fifths (38.7%; n=137) of the cases analyzed met the criteria for a mass shooting while the remaining shootings were classified as either hate crimes, domestic terrorism, domestic violence, revenge motivated, or ambiguous shootings. Using sentencing transcripts from a subset of these cases (n=42), this study examines how the social identities of both the shooters and victims could explain this discrepancy in classification. Using an adapted attributional analysis framework, the findings explore how social identity and other extra-legal factors may influence the classification process. This project is one of the first to trace how intersecting social identities impact judicial discretion and consider the ramifications such disparities have upon the experience of victimization, detection, and broader concepts of justice and the rule of law.

Author

• Amy Rebecca Templar, The University of Queensland