Claim

The study reported substantial differences among Harris County magistrate judges in some misdemeanor bail decisions, producing inconsistent outcomes across similar defendants.

Type COMPARATIVE · truth-evaluable: yes · status at snapshot: ACTIVE · created seq 22301 · qualifiers {"location":"Harris County, Texas misdemeanor bail hearings."}

Referenced 127 times: checked 1, looked up by assistants 0, viewed 97, shared 29. A count of attention, not evidence.

Topics

Courts · 1efd24fe Crime · 1efd24fe

Assessment

Supported

Score: 0.9955 under ledger-default@0.3.0 at snapshot 27745

3 of 4 review checks done · 1 counted · 2 by the author only

3 independent evidence lineages · review checks 1 of 4 · stability HIGH

Main unresolved issue: 7 counted evidence items have no independence review; repeats of one origin may be counted as several coverage:730b7c80-4362-8841-a51c-f4e7e1122017

Not yet independently audited.Evidence reviewed so far supports this claim, but only 1 of 4 review checks has been done.

Related: NARROWS incoming: Supported

Why?

Strongest counted support: The study reports substantial differences among Harris County magistrate judges, producing inconsistency and unequal treatment across similar defendants. weight 1.800000 evidence

Suppressed as dependent: The abstract directly reports both generally interpretable decision formulas and substantial differences among judges in some cases.

Review gaps: qualifiers reviewed, opposing search done, independence reviewed

What would most change this: One independent, direct measurement that contradicts this claim would move it from Supported to Supported.

Hide calculation

0.9955 under ledger-default@0.3.0 at snapshot 27745 · state Supported · Review checks: 1 of 4 · stability HIGH · 7 sources, 3 independent lineages

Model ledger-default@0.3.0 (the default model, not the answer) · snapshot 27745 · trace sha256:27d39d1b211284ea3b57bfdd93f19058096899bd74b57913536ec8652d69a4b7

Last changed at entry seq 24365; nothing logged since has borne on this claim.

How the number was reached

Each counted link is weighed by multiplying the factors the model declares; a factor it does not declare is not shown. Every factor name below links to what that number means.

Link	Working	Weight	Counted as
432b7e41 qualify	relevance DIRECT 2.0 × observation DATASET_RESULT 0.9 × interpretation 0 steps, 1 − 0.15 × 0 1.000000 × authenticity UNVERIFIED 1.0 × extraction UNVERIFIED 1.0 × provenance INDEPENDENT 1.0 × edition NAMED_OR_UNRELATED 1	1.800000	0.000000 (non directional)
a148276b qualify	relevance DIRECT 2.0 × observation DIRECT_TEXT 0.9 × interpretation 0 steps, 1 − 0.15 × 0 1.000000 × authenticity UNVERIFIED 1.0 × extraction UNVERIFIED 1.0 × provenance INDEPENDENT 1.0 × edition NAMED_OR_UNRELATED 1	1.800000	0.000000 (non directional)
23d31ff1 support	relevance DIRECT 2.0 × observation MODEL_OUTPUT 0.0 × interpretation 0 steps, 1 − 0.15 × 0 1.000000 × authenticity UNVERIFIED 1.0 × extraction UNVERIFIED 1.0 × provenance INDEPENDENT 1.0 × edition NAMED_OR_UNRELATED 1	0.000000	0.000000 (dependent strongest only, kept 2a7ed6f4)
d04589d1 support	relevance DIRECT 2.0 × observation DIRECT_TEXT 0.9 × interpretation 0 steps, 1 − 0.15 × 0 1.000000 × authenticity UNVERIFIED 1.0 × extraction UNVERIFIED 1.0 × provenance INDEPENDENT 1.0 × edition NAMED_OR_UNRELATED 1	1.800000	1.800000
96cd6b3d support	relevance DIRECT 2.0 × observation DIRECT_TEXT 0.9 × interpretation 0 steps, 1 − 0.15 × 0 1.000000 × authenticity UNVERIFIED 1.0 × extraction UNVERIFIED 1.0 × provenance INDEPENDENT 1.0 × edition NAMED_OR_UNRELATED 1	1.800000	1.800000
2a7ed6f4 support	relevance DIRECT 2.0 × observation DIRECT_TEXT 0.9 × interpretation 0 steps, 1 − 0.15 × 0 1.000000 × authenticity UNVERIFIED 1.0 × extraction UNVERIFIED 1.0 × provenance INDEPENDENT 1.0 × edition NAMED_OR_UNRELATED 1	1.800000	1.800000
c8a0db8b qualify	relevance DIRECT 2.0 × observation DATASET_RESULT 0.9 × interpretation 0 steps, 1 − 0.15 × 0 1.000000 × authenticity UNVERIFIED 1.0 × extraction UNVERIFIED 1.0 × provenance INDEPENDENT 1.0 × edition NAMED_OR_UNRELATED 1	1.800000	0.000000 (non directional)

prior 0.50 → log-odds 0.000000 + 5.400000 (the counted weights) = 5.400000 → probability 0.9955

Under neighbouring settings of the same model: 0.9777 to 0.9991, a spread of 0.0214.

Half-even rounding, six places for weights and four for the probability. The same inputs under the same model reproduce this exactly; that is what the trace hash above is for. How a score is worked out explains every factor, why it is there, and what the model sets it to.

Your view

Registered views

Nobody has registered a view yet.

Registered views are personal belief, not evidence: they never change Galedra's assessment. Affiliations are self-declared and shown only for groups of 5 or more.

Checked as part of

Statements this claim was broken out of. The claim is scored on its own; a statement's reading only counts its claims.

“An arXiv study of Harris County misdemeanor bail hearings reported that magistrates' decisions were generally captured by small interpretable formulas, while...” · 2 claims · 29 September 2026

Evidence for

The abstract directly reports both generally interpretable decision formulas and substantial differences among judges in some cases.

From Do Judges Behave Like Algorithms? Read 2026-09-29 Relevance DIRECT Steps 0 Counted
The supplied passage directly reports substantial judge-to-judge differences, inconsistent outcomes, and unequal treatment across similar defendants.

From Do Judges Behave Like Algorithms? Read 2026-09-29 Relevance DIRECT Steps 0 Counted

The excerpt explicitly states each component of the target claim.
The study reports substantial differences among Harris County magistrate judges, producing inconsistency and unequal treatment across similar defendants.

From Do Judges Behave Like Algorithms? Read 2026-09-29 Relevance DIRECT Steps 0 Counted
Cross-judge evaluation found meaningfully distinct decision processes and pronounced heterogeneity across judge pairs.

From Do Judges Behave Like Algorithms? Read 2026-09-29 Relevance DIRECT Steps 0 Counted

Evidence against

None.

Qualifications

The study is jurisdiction-specific and reports over 22,000 cases decided by 21 Harris County magistrates.

From Do Judges Behave Like Algorithms? Read 2026-09-29 Relevance DIRECT Steps 0 Counted

The target is narrowed to Harris County, Texas, and a study sample involving 21 magistrates.
The study states that its analysis covers 2020 through 2025.

From Do Judges Behave Like Algorithms? Read 2026-09-29 Relevance DIRECT Steps 0 Counted

The target omits the study period, which is 2020–2025.
The processed dataset contained 22,361 usable cases after exclusions and missing-value filtering.

From Do Judges Behave Like Algorithms? Read 2026-09-29 Relevance DIRECT Steps 0 Counted

The target omits the analyzed denominator and exclusions; the usable sample was 22,361 cases.

Suppressed as dependent

Evidence	Group	Kept instead
f52bf49b		2a7ed6f4

Inferences

Concluded from

None.

Used as a premise in

None.

An inference is interpretation, not evidence: it never changes the assessment of its conclusion. Each premise is a claim with its own evidence.

Threads

None. Threads are for disagreements about how a determination was made — a statement whose figures are not in the passage it rests on, two sources that may share an origin. Something about the world belongs in the evidence above.

Claim edges

From	Relationship	To
972ec8cc	NARROWS	e1122017

Review checklist

Review checks: 1 of 4

3 checks by this claim's own author, alongside the independent review above. 1 OPPOSING EVIDENCE SEARCH · 1 QUALIFIER CHECK · 1 EVIDENCE VERIFICATION. A check by the person who recorded a claim does not raise its review coverage.

Check	Done	By
qualifiers reviewed	no
opposing search done	no
independence reviewed	no
primary source reviewed	yes	432b7e41, a148276b, 23d31ff1, d04589d1, 96cd6b3d, 2a7ed6f4, c8a0db8b

Summary

Supported. The main support is: The study reports substantial differences among Harris County magistrate judges, producing inconsistency and unequal treatment across similar defendants. 21fa97ab

1 further item repeats the same origin and is not independent evidence. f52bf49b

Qualifier: The study is jurisdiction-specific and reports over 22,000 cases decided by 21 Harris County magistrates. 86e73b1e

Qualifier: The study states that its analysis covers 2020 through 2025. b06bf35e

Qualifier: The processed dataset contained 22,361 usable cases after exclusions and missing-value filtering. 2fecec06

A narrower version of this claim is supported. 972ec8cc

Generated by stub-v0.1; every sentence cites graph ids.

Contribution history

seq	event	detail
22301	APPENDED
22302	ACCEPT	AUTOMATIC_AFTER_VALIDATION
22309	LINK_EVIDENCE	by 1efd24fe (accepted)
22315	TASK_RESULT	by 1efd24fe (accepted)
23171	TASK_RESULT	by 1efd24fe (accepted)
24364	TASK_RESULT	by 1efd24fe (accepted)

Score trace

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