The Perfect Victim: Computational Analysis of Judicial Attitudes towards Victims of Sexual Violence

Eliya Habba; Dan Bareket; Renana Keydar; Gabriel Stanovsky

doi:10.1145/3594536.3595168

The Perfect Victim: Computational Analysis of Judicial Attitudes towards Victims of Sexual Violence

Eliya Habba, Dan Bareket, Renana Keydar, Gabriel Stanovsky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

We develop computational models to analyze court statements in order to assess judicial attitudes toward victims of sexual violence in the Israeli court system. The study examines the resonance of “rape myths” in the criminal justice system’s response to sex crimes, in particular in judicial assessment of victim’s credibility. We begin by formulating an ontology for evaluating judicial attitudes toward victim’s credibility, with eight ordinal labels and binary categorizations. Second, we curate a manually annotated dataset for judicial assessments of victim’s credibility in the Hebrew language, as well as a model that can extract credibility labels from court cases. The dataset consists of 855 verdict decision documents in sexual assault cases from 1990-2021, annotated with the help of legal experts and trained law students. The model uses a combined approach of syntactic and latent structures to find sentences that convey the judge’s attitude towards the victim and classify them according to the credibility label set. Our ontology, data, and models will be made available upon request, in the hope they spur future progress in this judicial important task.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages	111-120
Number of pages	10
ISBN (Electronic)	9798400701979
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3594536.3595168
State	Published - 19 Jun 2023
Externally published	Yes
Event	19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Braga, Portugal Duration: 19 Jun 2023 → 23 Jun 2023

Publication series

Name	19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference

Conference

Conference	19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023
Country/Territory	Portugal
City	Braga
Period	19/06/23 → 23/06/23

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© ICAIL 2023. All rights reserved.

Funding

This research was done in collaboration with Dr. Carmit Klar Cha-lamish, ARCCI and the Department of Criminology, Conflict Resolution, Management & Negotiation Graduate Program, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. The research was supported by a grant from the Center for Interdisciplinary Data Science Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (CIDR). We would like to thank Dana Epshtein, Itai Benshalom and Daniel Shwartstein for their valuable research assistance. This research was done in collaboration with Dr. Carmit Klar Chalamish, ARCCI and the Department of Criminology, Conflict Resolution, Management & Negotiation Graduate Program, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. The research was supported by a grant from the Center for Interdisciplinary Data Science Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (CIDR). We would like to thank Dana Epshtein, Itai Benshalom and Daniel Shwartstein for their valuable research assistance.

Funders	Funder number
CIDR
Department of Criminology
Bar-Ilan University
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Keywords

Judicial decision making
Rape myths
Sexual violence
Witness credibility

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1145/3594536.3595168

Cite this

Habba, E., Bareket, D., Keydar, R., & Stanovsky, G. (2023). The Perfect Victim: Computational Analysis of Judicial Attitudes towards Victims of Sexual Violence. In 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference (pp. 111-120). (19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/3594536.3595168

Habba, Eliya ; Bareket, Dan ; Keydar, Renana et al. / The Perfect Victim : Computational Analysis of Judicial Attitudes towards Victims of Sexual Violence. 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2023. pp. 111-120 (19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference).

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abstract = "We develop computational models to analyze court statements in order to assess judicial attitudes toward victims of sexual violence in the Israeli court system. The study examines the resonance of “rape myths” in the criminal justice system{\textquoteright}s response to sex crimes, in particular in judicial assessment of victim{\textquoteright}s credibility. We begin by formulating an ontology for evaluating judicial attitudes toward victim{\textquoteright}s credibility, with eight ordinal labels and binary categorizations. Second, we curate a manually annotated dataset for judicial assessments of victim{\textquoteright}s credibility in the Hebrew language, as well as a model that can extract credibility labels from court cases. The dataset consists of 855 verdict decision documents in sexual assault cases from 1990-2021, annotated with the help of legal experts and trained law students. The model uses a combined approach of syntactic and latent structures to find sentences that convey the judge{\textquoteright}s attitude towards the victim and classify them according to the credibility label set. Our ontology, data, and models will be made available upon request, in the hope they spur future progress in this judicial important task.",

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Habba, E, Bareket, D, Keydar, R & Stanovsky, G 2023, The Perfect Victim: Computational Analysis of Judicial Attitudes towards Victims of Sexual Violence. in 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference. 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp. 111-120, 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023, Braga, Portugal, 19/06/23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3594536.3595168

The Perfect Victim: Computational Analysis of Judicial Attitudes towards Victims of Sexual Violence. / Habba, Eliya; Bareket, Dan; Keydar, Renana et al.
19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2023. p. 111-120 (19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

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Habba E, Bareket D, Keydar R, Stanovsky G. The Perfect Victim: Computational Analysis of Judicial Attitudes towards Victims of Sexual Violence. In 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. 2023. p. 111-120. (19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, ICAIL 2023 - Proceedings of the Conference). doi: 10.1145/3594536.3595168

The Perfect Victim: Computational Analysis of Judicial Attitudes towards Victims of Sexual Violence

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

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