Completed Projects

Research: This research intended to learn whether a de-biasing jury instruction is effective at having jurors recognize their own implicit bias and overcome it during deliberation.

The majority of the literature points to the existence of juror bias, though there are certainly studies which either do not find effects or find that there is bias against white defendants. Mitchell et al. (2005), for example, conducted a meta-analysis and found a small but significant effect of racial bias on juror decisions. In another meta-analysis, Sweeney and Haney (1992) found that white mock-jurors give significantly longer sentences to white defendants than to black ones. Archival studies have also found that black defendants have higher conviction rates than white ones, that they tend to receive harsher sentences, and that they are more likely to be sentenced to death. Further, in a mock-juror study, Wuensch et al. (2002) found that jurors favored defendants of their in-group, particularly when victims were members of an outgroup. In his 2009 dissertation, Lytle also found that individuals display implicit bias against black defendants and that this bias reliably predicts conviction decisions.

However, some studies have found evidence contradicting these findings. In a review of past empirical research, Pfeifer (1990) came to the conclusion that there is little evidence supporting the existence of jurors’ racial bias and that many studies misinterpreted data leading to a false understanding of the state of bias. In another example, Elek and Agor (2014) failed to replicate past findings concerning racial bias and attributed this fact to jurors’ “spontaneous self-correction” in light of society’s recently egalitarian norms. Some have cited this kind of self-correction as a reason for these null effects, particularly in cases where race is salient. Shaw and Skolnick (1995) found in their study that there was an anti-White bias, which deliberation generally eliminated. Another theory suggests that studies which failed to find juror biases bear the mark of social dominance dynamics which obscure the racism at play.

There have been two empirical studies on the topic of jury instructions aimed at bias reduction, Ingriselli (2014) and Elek and Agor (2014).

What We Learned:

Research Team: Jim Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Renee L. Danser, Associate Director of Research and Strategic Partnerships, Access to Justice Lab

Salt Lake City Justice Court (UT)

Resources:

Research: Despite the potential for pretrial incarceration, most states do not supply an attorney to advocate for a defendant’s release at this “first appearance.”[1] There is a presumption of innocence pretrial, and that presumption requires special circumstances for detention. Yet, without the assistance of counsel, defendants are ill-equipped to challenge the prospect of their own detention.[2] Thus, when considered alongside the idea that the first appearance amounts to a “trial-like confrontation,”[3] a growing chorus of legal scholarship contends that the first appearance is crucial to the integrity of an individual’s defense.[4] While the United States Supreme Court has not yet recognized a constitutional right to CAFA, specifically,[5] there is a growing sentiment that such counsel should be considered among Sixth Amendment guarantees. Following Gideon v. Wainwright[6] and its progeny indicating, inter alia, that the right to counsel extends to criminal proceedings in which a defendant faces a loss of freedom,[7] legal scholars argue that the potential for pre-trial detention is just such a loss of freedom. The theory runs that there is a risk of pre-trial detention, a loss of freedom, at the first appearance and thus this confrontation fits squarely within the directive of Gideon and Argersinger. Although systematic, rigorous analysis of the effects of CAFA is rare, some evidence regarding these programs exists.[8] While these extant studies are valuable, there is little causal evidence regarding the effects of CAFA.

What We Learned:

Research Team: The A2J Lab partnered with the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University to conduct the evaluation which occured in two jurisdictions in Texas.

Resources:

Research: The Debt Collection Default Study measures what kinds of mailings from legal services providers to defendants are effective in reducing default rates in debt collection cases. To our knowledge, our study is the first of its kind to evaluate an intervention intended to reduce default rates in civil cases using a randomized control trial.

Designing self-help materials: The goal of our self-help materials was to induce debt collection defendants to (1) open, (2) read, and (3) act upon them. In terms of what action needed to be taken, our materials needed to induce a litigant to fill out three copies of an Answer form (which we would provide), mail two of those copies, receive a notice from the BMC of a scheduled court date, and appear in court on that scheduled date.

We designed interventions consisting of two forms of mailings based on research from other disciplines, including psychology, public health, and adult education.

Field operation: The Research Team received debt collection case information on a weekly basis from court staff at the Boston Municipal Court. After identifying potentially study-eligible cases, we compared the defendant’s address in the court file with that in an online address-checking system, and excluded those with inconsistent addresses.

The Research Team randomized whether each defendant receives a mailing, and if so, what kind. Using different formats and messages, the mailings urge defendants to contest their cases (by filing any necessary paperwork and showing up to court) and provide information/materials useful for such a defense (such as an Answer form).

Treatment group A, the Limited treatment:

• letter from the legal services provider
• three copies of a check-box style Answer form
• business envelopes pre-addressed to the court and the plaintiff’s attorney
• map to the courthouse
• and a post-it note appropriate for a wall calendar saying “Go To Court Today!”

Treatment group B, the Maximal treatment:

• First, a postcard with the signature Blob cartoon, stating: “Dear [Recipient Name], Help is on the way. Look for me!.” Next to “me” was a hand-drawn arrow pointing to an image of Blob.
• The next day, we mailed the defendant the same manila envelope (with corresponding contents) that those in the “Limited” group received, except that the two business envelopes to the Court and to the Plaintiff’s attorney had stamps.

Control group: no mailing

Results: We tracked two outcomes:

• Whether the defendant filed an answer, and
• Whether the defendant attended the first court hearing.

We find no difference in effectiveness as between our two mailings, but that both roughly double the rate at which defendants participate in their lawsuits. Specifically:

Chart comparing answer rates in debt collection cases

As compared to a randomly selected Control group with a 13% answer rate (corresponding to an 87% default rate), our “Limited” intervention group saw a 24% answer rate, and our “Maximal” intervention group saw a 24% answer rate.

The corresponding rates for whether the defendant appeared at the first scheduled court hearing were 7.5% for the Control group, 14% for the Limited group, and 15.3% for the Maximal group.

Differences between the Control versus the Limited and Maximal groups were statistically significant. Differences between the Limited and Maximal groups were not.

The Study: Part II

Field operation

This study builds on the smaller pilot study in Boston, and will include multiple legal service providers and multiple court locations.

By randomly varying the format and content of the package, the Research Team will learn what is necessary and cost effective to reduce default rates. Potential areas of exploration include the appearance of the external envelope; the text of the letter; whether the letter includes cartoons and/or other illustrations; the contents of the package (e.g., whether Answer forms, return envelopes, maps to courthouses, and reminder post-it notes are included); and whether the materials are translated, and if so, into what languages.

What We Learned: The results of this study shed some light on a few different areas of debate in the legal arena:

• why people obey the law and engage in official proceedings (and why they don’t)
• the role of civil legal services providers and the types of services they provide
• how courts present themselves to and interact with people without lawyers

Research Team: Jim Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Dalié Jiménez, Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law

Andrea Matthews, Bureau of Consumer Protection

Resources:

Research: Those who focus on self-help often propose that simplifying language in court forms will help self-represented litigants. This RCT tested that theory by randomizing people seeking divorce to assignment to a plain language form or the existing form.

What We Learned:

Research Team:

April Faith-Slaker, Executive Director, Texas Access to Justice Commission

Resources:

Research: Over four decades ago, the United States Supreme Court decided a trio of cases addressing the constitutionality of a court system’s imposition of filing fees without a corresponding in forma pauperis (“IFP”) process. These cases established that a court system could condition access to itself on a would-be litigant’s paying a mandatory (nonwaivable) filing fee, but that the due process clause demanded that courts waive the fee for indigent litigants in cases involving constitutional rights that could be effectuated only by resort to the courts. An example of a right within the exception was divorce, it being a feature of the United States legal system that when two spouses (even if childless and penniless) both affirmatively desire to exercise their constitutional right to terminate their marriage, one must sue the other in a court. The legal subject area in our study, divorce, is the same as that in the Supreme Court’s filing fee cases, and it remains the quintessential example of a constitutional right that can be effectuated
only by resort to the courts.

What if a court imposed other costs on mandatory “costs” on litigants in divorce cases? What if, effectively, a court system demanded that an indigent litigant find a lawyer in order to obtain a divorce?

Study Design: Our study randomized an individual seeking assistance to pursue a divorce to either an effort by a pro bono matching service to find a pro bono attorney to represent her (treated group) or a referral to existing self-help or low bono resources coupled with an offer to answer questions by telephone (control group). Our study partner was the provider of last resort for free legal services in our study site, Philadelphia County: it accepted intakes primarily via referrals from other organizations, and it required that service seekers exhaust all other options.

What We Learned:

Research Team: Jim Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Roseanna Sommers, Assistant Professor of Law University of Michigan

Ellen Degnan, Senior Staff Attorney, Southern Poverty Law Center

Thomas Ferriss, Staff Data Scientist, Google

Philadelphia VIP

Resources:

D. James Greiner, Ellen Degnan, Thomas Ferriss, and Roseanna Sommers, “Using random assignment to measure court accessibility for low-income divorce seekers,” PNAS April 6, 2021 118 (14)

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What We Learned:

Research Team: Matthew Stubenberg, Innovator in Residence, William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii

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What We Learned:

Research Team: Matthew Stubenberg, Innovator in Residence, William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii

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What We Learned:

Research Team: Matthew Stubenberg, Innovator in Residence, William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii

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What We Learned:

Research Team: Matthew Stubenberg, Innovator in Residence, William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii

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Research: The Public Safety Assessment-Decision Making Framework (PSA-DMF) System is a risk assessment instrument and decision-making framework designed to provide an accurate tool to distinguish criminal defendants according to the risk that they will engage in future misconduct. Jurisdictions across the United States have begun to implement the PSA-DMF System at the initial release/detention hearing at the start of a criminal case. We are conducting randomized control trials to assess whether providing the PSA-DMF System report to judicial officials making initial release/detention decisions leads to reductions in the following outcomes:

• failures to appear at future hearings;
• new criminal activity;
• new violent criminal activity; and
• the number of days defendants spend incarcerated pretrial.

These instruments, despite their promise, give rise to some concerns worthy of study. Many rely on subjective factors, which require the exercise of judgment to score; their predictive power has not been assessed using data from the jurisdictions in which they are used; most instruments depend on information that, realistically, can only be obtained from an arrestee interview; and, crucially, only two instruments have undergone randomized evaluation in over six decades of use in the United States.

The Studies: The A2J Lab will evaluate the effects of the Public Safety Assessment-Decision Making Framework (PSA-DMF) System report in several jurisdictions across the country. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the impact of the report, which eliminates the need for arrestee interviews, on several factors, including new criminal activity, the number of days individuals spend incarcerated pretrial; and racial and gender fairness. (Visit the Open Science Framework page about this study for more information.)

The A2J Lab is also completing four validation studies of the PSA. Unlike most of the A2J Lab’s studies, these studies are not RCTs. A validation study uses statistical analysis to determine how well the PSA classifies what it was designed to classify, i.e., the risk that certain outcomes will occur.

The PSA-DMF System: The Public Safety Assessment (“PSA”) uses nine factors to generate scores that assess risk of three outcomes—failure to appear pretrial, new criminal arrest while on pretrial release, and new violent criminal arrest while on pretrial release. Judicial officers use the PSA scores along with a Release Conditions Matrix also known as a Decision Making Framework (“DMF”) to inform pretrial release decisions. To learn more about the factors please visit https://advancingpretrial.org/psa/factors/. The report generated by the PSA and DMF is called the PSA-DMF System report.

What We Learned:

Research Team: Jim Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Chris Griffin, Director of Empirical & Policy Research; Research Professor, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

Matthew Stubenberg, Innovator in Residence, William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii

Ryan Halen, Data Analyst, Access to Justice Lab

Heidi Liu, J.D./Ph.D. candidate, Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School

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Research:

What We Learned:

Research Team: Chris Griffin, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

Matthew Stubenberg, Innovator in Residence, William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii

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