Essays on the Economics of Crime and Criminal Justice

The second essay examines the relationship between the gender of the defendant or the victim and judicial outcomes. Comparing outcomes in homicide cases between early Chicago (1870--1930) and a national sample in 1988, this essay shows that the gender gap in trial outcomes has narrowed, but the gender gap in sentence length has not. I find that black women were largely treated similarly to white women in either time period. I also show that the gender gap is the largest in cases where defendants or victims are 20 to 40 years old.