Selective Justice: Discrimination Against Muslims in the Criminal Context

Abstract

Existing research on discrimination in the criminal context has focused on prejudice against Black people, with many of the findings fitting the theory of aversive racism. To extend this research in the context of modern-day Islamophobia, I conducted a series of survey experiments to explore whether participants discriminate against criminal suspects with an identifiably Muslim name. I found that participants did not show a bias against Muslim suspects on questions that directly probed their perceptions of the crime (Studies 1 and 2), but they did show a bias on other indirect questions (Studies 2 and 3). When accounting for vote choice, participants who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election were more likely to show this anti-Muslim bias (Studies 2 and 3). Participants were more likely to attribute religious reasons and political ideology as driving factors behind the crime when the suspect had an identifiably Muslim name vs. an identifiably Christian name (Study 3). Trump voters were more likely than non-Trump voters to attribute religious reasons and political ideology as driving factors behind the crime when the suspect had an identifiably Muslim name vs. an identifiably Christian name (Studies 2 and 3). Trump voters also tended to support delivering harsher prison sentences to suspects with identifiably Muslim names, relative to non-Trump voters (Studies 2 and 3). These findings suggest that the form of discrimination described by the theory of aversive racism can be extended to apply to other types of intergroup bias as well, which I term passive discrimination. Limitations and directions for future work are also discussed.