Justice Not As Blind As Previously Thought

NotSoHeavyD3 writes "I doubt this is much of a surprise but apparently Cornell University did a study that seems to show you're more likely to get convicted if you're ugly. From the article: 'According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences — an average of 22 months longer in prison.'"

Comments

Did they adjust for meth and crack use?

[elrous0]

Those will take a real toll on your looks. They also have a nasty tendency to turn people into thieves, prostitutes, and murderers. Also, being white trash will tend to age you about ten years, and it usually also comes with at least two or three DUI-on-an-ATV/public-intoxication/starting-a-fight-down-at-the-bar arrests.

Re:Did they adjust for meth and crack use?

[Monkeedude1212]

Yeah.

I mean, he may get an extra 6 months because of that big scar on his cheek, but that big scar on his cheek shows that he got into a knife fight at some point. Perhaps keeping individuals prone to that kind of behavior off the streets for a few extra months isn't exactly a bad thing.

Re:Did they adjust for meth and crack use?

[TheRaven64]

Ugh, what a horrible test. It's loaded with an astonishing amount of implicit cultural bias. It asked me to put a load of pictures into either 'white american' or 'black american' categories. Since I'm not American, the 'American' part of those labels means very little to me, so I was just categorising the people based on skin colour. When you come to dark-skinned hispanics, where should you put them? I picked black, because that's how most of the people of that ethnicity of my acquaintance (who are not Americans of any kind) describe themselves. Apparently this is wrong, but the test is clearly designed by people with no understanding of psychology because it told me that this was wrong, which meant that I got it 'right' the next time. Not because it was measuring how I perceive these people (I perceive them as Spanish or Portuguese with some Moorish ancestry, not as Black or White Americans), but because - over the course of the test - I had learned that the people designing the test perceived them as 'White Americans'. I stopped doing the test at that point. It is so far away from being scientific that it's not even funny.

Lemme be the first...

[MyLongNickName]

Any time a study comes out, twelvity million Slashdotters start chanting "Correlation!=Causation". None actually read the article. In fact, most have their rant typed out long before the story hits slashdot, and simply cut and paste into the comment box.

So, in the interest of keeping up this fine tradition, I offer the following:

1) Ugly people are more likely to actually commit the crime. Makes sense. Pretty people are less likely to need to do a crime as they are more likely to get good employement.
2) Committing a crime MAKES you ugly. Far fetched? Maybe. But I am sure those stupid researchers who only get by on grant money never thought of such a thing.

Clearly, I a faceless Slashdotter am more capable of analyzing the situation without actually reading the article, or giving it more than 20 seconds of thought.

Can the rest of my Slashdot bretheren help support my contentions?

Re:Correlation is not causation

[Karganeth]

Nobody even fucking said that being ugly caused you to commit more crimes.

if i see another +5 insightful "correlation != causation" my brain is going to fucking explode.

Re:Correlation is not causation

[LoverOfJoy]

if i see another +5 insightful "correlation != causation" my brain is going to fucking explode.

correlation != causation c'mon guys. Mod me up. You know you want to see it, too.

I believe it.

[canajin56]

A woman at a grocery store near here was in charge of counting money from the tills and putting it in the safe. Over the course of a year she managed to steal over $100,000 in cash by doctoring the electronic sales records. The managers noticed, but she was too hot, so they routinely fired+blackballed the ugliest cashiers for stealing. Well, she finally got caught. The judge gave her a stern warning, no jail time, no probation. And she didn't have to pay back, she got to keep the $100,000. Judge even called her a wonderful person, said she has no chance of reoffending, and has a bright future as a university student and it would be wrong of him to get in the way of her! Left implied is that she gives good head, I guess.

I wish I was hot enough to steal 100 Gs and get to KEEP IT ALL with no other punishment.