Investigating the Influence of Psychologists' Recommendations on Thai Juvenile Court Judgements

Abstract

Do psychologists' recommendations impact the decisions made in Thai juvenile courts? This paper examines the role that psychologists play in shaping the decisions of Thai juvenile courts. Owing to the inherent difficulty of directly measuring psychologists' influence in actual court settings, we rely on an innovative approach to answer the research question. We utilize the predictive capabilities of a Legal Judgement Prediction (LJP) classification model to reflect the workings and outcomes of Thailand's juvenile legal system. Our research leverages a dataset of 9,200 cases, applying advanced machine-learning techniques to evaluate the impact of psychological assessments on these cases. Through rigorous analysis and model training, we have developed a highly effective machine-learning model for Legal Judgement Prediction. The models demonstrate high predictive performance, with a weighted average F1 score of 0.78, indicating a strong ability to accurately emulate the outcomes of Thai juvenile cases. Furthermore, our findings suggest that psychologists' recommendations have minimal influence on judicial decisions, with psychological scores from psychological testing being more indicative of outcomes. This insight challenges preconceived notions about the weight of psychological advice in legal judgments and underscores the need for deeper examination.