Crystal Yang

Judges appointed by Republican presidents gave longer sentences to black defendants and shorter ones to women than judges appointed by Democrats, according to a new study that analyzed data on more than half a million defendants. “Republican-appointed judges sentence black defendants to three more months than similar nonblacks and female defendants to two fewer months than similar males compared with Democratic-appointed judges,” the study found, adding, “These differences cannot be explained by other judge characteristics and grow substantially larger when judges are granted more discretion.” The study was conducted by two professors at Harvard Law School, Alma Cohen and Crystal S. Yang. They examined the sentencing practices of about 1,400 federal trial judges over more than 15 years, relying on information from the Federal Judicial Center, the United States Sentencing Commission and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Federal judges appointed by Republican presidents give black defendants sentences that are, on average, six to seven months longer than the sentences they give to similar white defendants, according to a new working paper from Alma Cohen and Crystal Yang of Harvard Law School. That racial sentencing disparity is about twice as large as the one observed among judges appointed by Democrats, who give black defendants sentences that are three to four months longer than the sentences they give to white defendants with similar histories who commit similar crimes...“Overall, these results indicate that judicial ideology may be a source of the persistent and large racial and gender disparities in the criminal justice system,” Cohen and Yang conclude.

All over America, people have been demanding real bail reform including but not limited to ending the practice of cash bail. So what is cash bail? Cash bail is when a judge decides to assign a cash amount as the price for an accused defendant to be released from jail on their own recognizance or with conditions...As more and more jurisdictions across the country have passed bail reform legislation, the bail industry is starting to push back emphasizing a counter-narrative built entirely using the politics of fear...But, let’s not mince words here, the entire argument is BS, the VAST majority of defendants stuck in jail because of cash bail are accused of minor crimes as Crystal Yang, an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School explained in her recent New York University Law Review article: “On any given day, the United States detains almost half a million individuals before trial, with over 60% of the U.S. jail population comprised of individuals who have not yet been convicted."

Higher wages for low-skilled jobs often prevents return to prison. The mission statement for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is: “Reduce recidivism among those we touch.” But a big factor keeping a parolee from going back to prison is what the job opportunities are like where an inmate is released, according to a recent study. Ex-offenders released to counties with higher low-skilled wages stand a better chance of not going back to jail, wrote Crystal Yang, a Harvard Law School researcher. Yang studied 4 million offenders in 43 states released between 2000 and 2013. Among those were inmates released from Ohio prisons between 2009-2013. At the beginning of 2013, Ohio parolees numbered 14,653, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

An op-ed by Tommy Tobin `16. "The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court." With this one line, the U.S. Supreme Court recently gave us a clarion call why the country needs to fill the vacancy caused by the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia...Harvard Law’s Crystal S. Yang found that judicial vacancies affect the administration of our criminal justice system. Her forthcoming article in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that judicial vacancies induce prosecutors to exercise their discretion in deciding whether to prosecute a case after an arrest. Professor Yang found that prosecutors may be up to 17 percent less likely to move forward with a case during a vacancy rather than a full-member court. For those cases that are prosecuted, Dr. Yang found that defendants were significantly more likely to plead guilty and avoid a trial, possibly because of better deals offered in a period of overbooked judicial calendars, or a desire of defendants to speed up a process. Professor Yang’s study suggests that judicial vacancies do not simply affect judges, they can change the behavior and outcomes for other actors in our criminal justice system.

An op-ed by Tommy Tobin `16. North Carolina is home to the nation’s longest-running federal court vacancy. Recently, Patricia Timmons-Goodson was nominated to fill the post that’s been unfilled for over a decade. Sen. Richard Burr reacted to this news by vowing to block this former state supreme court justice from the federal bench. Federal judicial vacancies occur all over the country. Right now, 60 nominees are awaiting confirmation. Judicial vacancies have consequences. A forthcoming paper by Professor Crystal S. Yang in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found significant real-world effects on criminal justice outcomes during judicial vacancies.

It’s not just Supreme Court vacancies that are going unfilled; vacancies have become an acute problem throughout the federal judiciary. A recent study by a professor at Harvard Law School finds that these vacancies are causing prosecutors to drop more cases and offer lighter plea deals than they would otherwise, which has “led to approximately 1,000 fewer federal prisoners per fiscal year . . . largely from drug offenses.” While this may be letting some criminals off easy, the professor suggests that “judicial vacancies may have had an unintended benefit of reducing the prison population toward the optimal level of incarceration...[Crystal] Yang...“Resource Constraints and the Criminal Justice System: Evidence from Judicial Vacancies,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (forthcoming).

A host of new faculty members arrived at Harvard Law School this academic year, and over the summer, Dean Martha Minow announced two new faculty who will join HLS in 2015.