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posted by cmn32480 on Monday January 02 2017, @02:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the requesting-a-continuance dept.

Judges in the United States tend to give defendants longer sentences the day after switching to daylight saving time compared with other days of the year, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Previous research has shown that people tend to sacrifice, on average, about 40 minutes of sleep when they "spring forward" to daylight saving time, and even this small amount of lost sleep can have negative consequences, including an increase in workplace injuries, slacking off at work, and auto accidents. The results of this new research suggest that shortened sleep associated with the change to daylight saving time might also affect the severity of sentences doled out by judges.

"We find that the sentences given to those convicted of crimes may be partially polluted by the sleep of those giving the punishments," says researcher Kyoungmin Cho of the University of Washington, first author on the study. "Sleep is a factor that should not play a role in their sentences, but does."

Journal Reference:
Kyoungmin Cho, Christopher M. Barnes, Cristiano L. Guanara. Sleepy Punishers Are Harsh Punishers: Daylight Saving Time and Legal Sentences. Psychological Science, 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0956797616678437


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  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Monday January 02 2017, @09:33PM

    by sjames (2882) on Monday January 02 2017, @09:33PM (#448653) Journal

    I can understand not being all that enamored of changing the clock, but I also understand the rationale. Too many bosses too unwilling to change the start and end of business hours until the other guy goes first. By mandating a change of the clock itself, everyone goes at once even if they don't do anything.

    IMHO, it is nice having an extra hour of daylight in the evenings.

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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday January 04 2017, @06:42PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday January 04 2017, @06:42PM (#449468) Journal

    IMHO, it is nice having an extra hour of daylight in the evenings.

    Around here (RI) it's all pointless. Summer daylight is 5am - 8pm; winter is 7am-4:30pm. Keeping DST year-round would help a bit, as if you work the usual 9-5 then having light from 8-6 would be great, 7-5 just means the whole damn state drives home in the dark every night. But really I feel like we ought to just shift all the timezones west a bit and target 9-6 as daylight hours, if not even later. Even if I wanted to run errands before work while I have the light, nothing's open that early. People are more likely to be out after work than before, so it seems more useful to have extra daylight after usual business hours than before. Unless you just want to overcompensate for people being tired in the morning.

    Of course, I don't usually work 9-5 so I don't care all that much, but even if I'm 7-3, 12-8, 3-11...any shift at all, at worst moving daylight later would have no real impact.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday January 04 2017, @09:27PM

      by sjames (2882) on Wednesday January 04 2017, @09:27PM (#449536) Journal

      I would be fine with keeping DST year round. I remember the year Nixon got DST moved up to Jan 6th. Apparently many were squawking about dangers for kids waiting for the bus in the dark, but I and all my friends thought of it as a fun time when we got our parents to let us play with flashlights. Honestly, the flashlights weren't really necessary given the streetlights and such, but the kids enjoyed it.

      Information on that seems sparse now so I have no idea if any of the worries were founded (though I doubt it) since I was only in 2nd grade at the time.