When the Washington State Supreme Court abolished the death penalty this month, that was primarily because of Katherine Beckett.
Beckett, a professor of sociology and law at the University of Washington, wrote a statistical study with a doctoral student in 2014, finding that, while a defendant’s race didn’t appear to influence prosecutors in whether to seek the death penalty, juries were more than four times more likely to impose a death sentence if the defendant was black. The ruling this month declared the death penalty unconstitutional “because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” In their deliberation, the justices wrote, they afforded “great weight to Beckett’s analysis and conclusions.”
That’s one good thing about doing statistical analysis: The findings are the findings.
The state had spent several years trying to undermine Beckett and her work. In 2013 she had taken on the topic at the invitation of lawyers for Allen Eugene Gregory, a convicted murderer who was one of eight men on Washington’s death row. That research was met with a gantlet of extended debate and attacks, including scrutiny from an expert hired by the state who suggested that the two scholars had unethically adjusted models to generate a predetermined result. After much examination of statistical analysis and modeling, the court decided differently in Gregory’s case. He and the other death-row inmates will have their sentences commuted to life in prison.
Beckett spoke with The Chronicle about rerunning analyses for justices, fielding disturbing emails, and the need to research the efficacy of long sentences for violent crimes.
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Did you have any inkling that your research would have the impact it did?
We knew that this case was headed to the state Supreme Court, so the impact was always there as a possibility. We knew there was that potential.
At some point you reran the analysis and corrected for errors. How concerned were you that the findings might be diminished or even disproved?
We ran the analyses probably hundreds of times, measuring different variables in different ways. Literally for years we were rerunning the analysis. And over time we just became more and more confident in the strength of the findings, because no matter how you ran it, the race of the defendant just kept coming back.
How did you try to safeguard the research process so that the potential significance of the findings didn’t subconsciously affect the analysis?
That’s one good thing about doing statistical analysis: The findings are the findings. There’s not a lot you can do to influence them. And we were very clear with the attorneys that we were happy to do the analyses, and if they showed that race didn’t matter, we wouldn’t try to rig the game in any way. They were 100-percent on board with that.
Did the findings have an immediate impact or take a while to get traction?
It took a while. Somewhere along the way, the state elected to hire an expert who issued a critique of our work, and that spawned a roughly two-year back-and-forth dialogue that was eventually umpired by a commissioner appointed by the state Supreme Court.
How did the scrutiny by the state’s attorney or the justices compare with, say, peer review?
The expert hired by the state was skeptical and critical in a way I had not seen in peer review. It was an exhaustive process and somewhat trying. The commissioner appointed by the Supreme Court ultimately wrote her own report, and the justices looked at both that and the back-and-forth. So it was very well vetted, much more thoroughly than anything I’ve experienced in the peer-review process.
Your research didn’t exactly go viral, but it achieved a level of attention unusual for academic work. What’s that like?
It’s a little overwhelming, actually. But also deeply gratifying.
The court, in deciding this case, really took social-science evidence seriously. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that statistical evidence is not sufficient and that one needs to prove the intent to discriminate, which is a sort of unattainable evidentiary bar. So given that this kind of study would not be considered at the federal level, to have it taken so seriously at the state level is heartening. I think it has given a lot of people hope that perhaps state constitutions and judiciaries can provide more-meaningful protections than the federal courts can.
And it’s gratifying that the court was willing to hang in there for several years of very technical and boring back-and-forth about what p-values really mean, and all these things I’m sure the justices would rather not have spent their time on.
These days, scholars in the public eye are often subject to internet attacks or other scorn. Did that happen to you?
I’ve gotten a few emails that were somewhat tension-producing, I’ll say, but it hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been honored and pleased by the general tenor of the communication I’ve received.
What are you working on now?
Essentially I’m trying to figure out why mass incarceration is persisting the way it is, given that crime rates have been plummeting for many years, and many states have adopted reforms intended to reduce prison populations. Yet we see a much smaller reduction in the prison population than you’d expect.
I also have a project analyzing the causes of the proliferation of long and life sentences, specifically in Washington State. In many states, including Washington, one of the main drivers of mass incarceration is the increasing length of sentences.
Where would you like to see more of your peers focus their research?
I’ve only ever dreamed of my own research agenda, not other people’s.
A lot of people who are interested in criminal-justice reform tend to want to avoid the difficult subject of violence. As cohort researchers, we’re going to have to get brave and be willing to look that in the eye. The temptation is to talk about the need to keep marijuana possessors out of the system, but that’s just not going to get you very far. Not that we shouldn’t do that, but we should also be proposing harder questions about what justice looks like when serious harm is involved.
Why is that an interesting research question?
Well, our ideas about what justice requires have changed. The amount of time that people now serve for cases involving serious violence is far greater than it used to be. We didn’t always do this, and most countries don’t. Those changing sensibilities are important. Not only are long sentences a major contributor to mass incarceration, but they’re also contributing to the rapid aging of the prison population, which is an extraordinarily inefficient, inhumane, and expensive development.
One of the most consistent criminological findings is that people age out of crime, and that includes people who have committed serious crimes. The risk that someone poses after the age of 50 or so is just very, very small. There may be some exceptions in cases involving psychosis or sociopathy, but in the vast majority of cases, age is an excellent predictor of being safe to be released.
What’s your advice for professors to improve the impact of their work?
In some ways, I just got lucky. But I hope this case supports the idea that, for those of us interested in bringing our research to bear on public-policy questions, it’s absolutely great to allow your values and political commitments to shape the questions you ask. We do have to be careful to not let our values and political commitments determine or influence our findings.
The other thing is really thinking through the institutional context. It’s much less likely that the findings around race would have had an impact in the state legislature as opposed to the courts. So, given the particularities of the issue you’re working on, what kinds of partnerships are most likely to lead to some kind of impact?
So if you hadn’t been working with the lawyers on this particular case, and instead you had just published your research and tried to interest state leaders, it might not have gone very far?
Right. If there were a legislative initiative underway, they probably would have wanted to focus on something more like the cost associated with the death penalty.
What would you say to fellow scholars who might find themselves and their work attracting heated public attention?
Hang in there. Take deep breaths. It can be very intense, particularly if people attack your integrity. Just try not to get sucked into personal animosity, try to keep your head on your shoulders, and just keep focusing on the actual work and the quality of the work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Lee Gardner writes about the management of colleges and universities, higher-education marketing, and other topics. Follow him on Twitter @_lee_g, or email him at lee.gardner@chronicle.com.
