Poster #145 - An Architecture of Absence: A 52-Jurisdiction Policy Surveillance Map of Judicial DEI Training

• In Event: Poster Session II (posters 80 – 155)

Abstract

Introduction: Black male defendants in federal court receive sentences 13.4% longer than similarly situated white male defendants (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2023). In 2020 the Conference of Chief Justices named training as an institutional response. No one has mapped that intervention itself.

Design/Methods: This paper presents a national policy surveillance study of judicial DEI training, coded across 52 jurisdictions (50 states, D.C., and the federal judiciary) through a five-tier source hierarchy and 60 scored variables.

Results: Fourteen jurisdictions have a codified mandate; thirty-eight do not. The study produces four outputs: (1) the Judicial DEI Training Architecture Dataset; (2) the Judicial Equity Training Index (JETI), composed of the DEI Architecture Typology (Types A through D) and Dosage Index (0–6); (3) the Type A Absence Taxonomy, identifying eight structurally distinct routes by which those 38 jurisdictions arrived at no mandate; and (4) the bench exemption: in 31 of 47 jurisdictions (66%), judges are outside the attorney continuing legal education system through which equity training has been built.

Discussion: The zeros were not interchangeable. Their absences had architectures, and those architectures shape what downstream intervention is even possible. Phase 1 documents the policy dose; Phase 2 tests the behavioral outcome.

Author

• Alexander Karsh, None