The Early Origins of Judicial Stringency in Bail Decisions: Evidence from Early-Childhood Exposure to Hindu-Muslim Riots in India

Pre-print, Working paper: We estimate the causal effects of judges' exposure to communal violence during early childhood on pretrial detention rates by exploiting novel administrative data on judgments and detailed resumes of judicial officers born during 1955-1991. Our baseline result is that judges exposed to communal violence between ages 0 and 6 years are 16% more prone to deny bail than the average judge, with the impact being stronger for the experience of riots between ages 3 and 6 years. The observed judicial stringency is driven by childhood exposure to riots with a higher duration of state-imposed lockdowns and low riot casualties.

Author(s)

Nitin Kumar Bharti, Sutanuka Roy

Date of publication
  • 2022
Keywords JEL
C93 I25 O15
Keywords
  • Early-childhood
  • Pretrial Detention
  • Judicial Bias
  • Communal Violence Early-childhood
  • Communal Violence
Internal reference
  • PSE Working Papers n°2022-05
Pages
  • 33 p.
Version
  • 1