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Switching to Daylight Saving Time May Lead to Harsher Legal Sentences in the U.S.

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

Fnord666 writes:

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

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by toddestan on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:21AM

    by toddestan (4982) on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:21AM (#448713)

    Leap seconds are not factored into sentences, so if one happens when you're serving time, you end up being imprisoned for a second longer than you should.

  • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday January 03 2017, @07:53AM

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 03 2017, @07:53AM (#448818)

    But does a leap second affect the judge passing sentence, as per DST?