From the
New York Times Magazine:
Three men doing time in Israeli prisons recently appeared before a parole board consisting of a judge, a criminologist and a social worker. The three prisoners had completed at least two-thirds of their sentences, but the parole board granted freedom to only one of them. Guess which one:
- Case 1 (heard at 8:50 a.m.): An Arab Israeli serving a 30-month sentence for fraud.
- Case 2 (heard at 3:10 p.m.): A Jewish Israeli serving a 16-month sentence for assault.
- Case 3 (heard at 4:25 p.m.): An Arab Israeli serving a 30-month sentence for fraud.
There was a pattern to the parole board’s decisions, but it wasn’t related to the men’s ethnic backgrounds, crimes or sentences. It was all about timing, as researchers discovered by analyzing more than 1,100 decisions over the course of a year. Judges, who would hear the prisoners’ appeals and then get advice from the other members of the board, approved parole in about a third of the cases, but the probability of being paroled fluctuated wildly throughout the day. Prisoners who appeared early in the morning received parole about 70 percent of the time, while those who appeared late in the day were paroled less than 10 percent of the time.
The odds favored the prisoner who appeared at 8:50 a.m. — and he did in fact receive parole. But even though the other Arab Israeli prisoner was serving the same sentence for the same crime — fraud — the odds were against him when he appeared (on a different day) at 4:25 in the afternoon. He was denied parole, as was the Jewish Israeli prisoner at 3:10 p.m, whose sentence was shorter than that of the man who was released. They were just asking for parole at the wrong time of day.
There was nothing malicious or even unusual about the judges’ behavior, which was reported earlier this year by Jonathan Levav of Stanford and Shai Danziger of Ben-Gurion University. The judges’ erratic judgment was due to the occupational hazard of being, as George W. Bush once put it, “the decider.” The mental work of ruling on case after case, whatever the individual merits, wore them down. This sort of decision fatigue can make quarterbacks prone to dubious choices late in the game and C.F.O.’s prone to disastrous dalliances late in the evening. It routinely warps the judgment of everyone, executive and nonexecutive, rich and poor — in fact, it can take a special toll on the poor. Yet few people are even aware of it, and researchers are only beginning to understand why it happens and how to counteract it.
Do you think this has any relevance to Social Security?
6 comments:
For many years I have believed that having late day hearings stacked the deck against my clients. I am often given a choice of times, and always grab the earliest AM hearings I can get.
relevance to social security- yes.
relevance to everything else is life- yes.
unfortunately, government, as life in general, has its obstacles.
too bad, so sad, bye bye.
that is what judicial review is for.
ODAR's goals for ALJs promote decisional fatigue, in and of themselves, as the numbers (500-700 cases per year) are only attainable if the ALJ skims the files and makes quick judgments based on a hastily formed opinion. Under the current set-up, there is little real staff support and there is simply no time to become familiar with the evidence, weigh it, and make a reasoned decision with coherent writing to spell it out.
This is why we need afternoon naps.
Seems silly to prefer hearings one time of day over another. Under ODAR procedure, a case heard in the afternoon isn't necessarily decided in the afternoon. So a case may be reviewed on Monday Morning, heard on Tuesday afternoon and decided Wednesday morning. I don't get the point about time of day of hearing.
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