Some Psychometrics of Judicial Decision Making

Abstract

The number, variety, and complexity of factors that govern judicial discretion have made it difficult for legal practitioners, social science researchers, convicted offenders and their victims, and the general public to understand sentencing practices. The development of a standardized and quantitative summary of high-consensus aggravating and mitigating circumstances is an explicitly psychometric approach to this general problem in discretionary law. A Sentencing Factors Inventory (SFI) was scored with high levels of interrater agreement from probation files and, in a separate sample, from court observations. Systematic evaluations and extensions of the SFI approach to judicial discretion are indicated with particular attention to matters of social validity.