Judicial Selection and Criminal Punishment

Abstract

This paper develops and tests a theory that in states with judicial elections, criminal justice outcomes will be more punitive than in states without elections. Leveraging a data set previously unused in the judicial politics literature, I estimate time-series regressions of state sentencing and incarceration rates over a 38-year period while distinguishing between types of judicial elections to establish support for the theory. I find that states where trial judges are reelected are generally more punitive than states without judicial elections, and this punitiveness is in response to the public’s ideological preferences, indicating that elections serve as an important judicial accountability mechanism for citizens.