How do Disparities in the Criminal Justice System and Medical Settings Shape Decision-Making?

Abbey, Anita (2024) How do Disparities in the Criminal Justice System and Medical Settings Shape Decision-Making? Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Background
Research evidence exists for the presence of disparities in decision-making for professionals from both the healthcare and legal sectors. In health settings, physical attributes, such as service-user race, have been suggested to evoke disparate decisions in professionals. Legal professionals, including jurors, have also been reported to exhibit varied perceptions of expert witnesses based on their attributes, which has also been suggested to negatively impact upon their decision-making.

Methods
The systematic review included in the thesis portfolio searched literature within scientific journals on the topic of racial disparities in healthcare workers’ decision-making. A narrative approach was used to synthesise data from quantitative studies. The empirical study employed a mock jury stimulation trial to assess: credibility ratings given to an expert witness based on their characteristics (i.e., profession and race), and how these credibility ratings impact on jurors’ verdict decision-making.

Results
Eleven studies met the inclusion criteria for the systematic review. Overall, research findings were mixed. Evidence for the presence of racial disparities was more evident for healthcare professionals’ decisions in the following areas: treatment recommendations, symptom severity and attribution of symptom cause, in favour of White patients. There was weaker evidence in support of the existence of racial disparities in healthcare professionals for diagnostic and prescriptive decisions. Findings from the empirical study suggest that jurors’ decisions in relation to the perception of credibility did not vary based on expert witness race or profession. However, jurors’ decisions in relation to verdict sentence did vary, based on an expert’s profession and/or credibility rating.

Conclusions
Findings from this thesis portfolio highlight the need for more research to be conducted that focuses on racial disparities in decisions made by both healthcare professionals and jurors. More research is particularly needed in this area to build on existing knowledge about biases, plus other factors that may act as mechanisms which generate disparate decisions in both settings.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	12 Mar 2025 15:29
Last Modified:	12 Mar 2025 15:29
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98739
DOI:

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