A Study of Criminal Justice Descretion (original) (raw)
American Journal of Criminal Justice, 2006
Contemporary research on criminal sentencing has analyzed sentencing under numerous sentencing policies, yet the effect of sentencing policy on outcomes and disparity is not known. A variety of sentencing guidelines systems, one of the more common sentencing policies, exists throughout the country. In addition, recent Supreme Court decisions regarding sentencing guidelines are likely to produce alterations to several state sentencing policies over the next few years. Using data from the state of Florida, the current study examines the effects of policy transformation on sentencing disparity within the focal concerns of sentencing perspective. The authors view sentencing guidelines as a practical constraint on sentencing decisions that influence other key variables. The results indicate that sentencing policy transformation has an important effect on both sentencing decisions and on the factors that shape those decisions. The findings suggest that future sentencing research and theoretical development would benefit from incorporating measures of policy differences in its analyses. t Direct all correspondence to: Matthew S. Crow, University of West Florida, Division of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies,
Judicial Sentencing Strategies and Recidivism
The notion of punishment as a consequence for criminal behavior and its purpose as a mechanism for deterrence has long been an issue of considerable debate among members of the criminal justice system including law enforcement agencies, probation authorities, juvenile justice practitioners, and especially those of us within the judiciary. A variety of complementary and disparate perspectives and philosophies exist relative to this particular aspect of jurisprudence, but given the plethora of approaches used by the courts, it is safe to assume that there is a distinct lack of consensus about the most effectual strategies for sentencing those convicted of a crime. Two principle theories and ideologies are prevalent with regard to this aspect of jurisprudence. They have been defined within scholarly journals as the consequentialist theory and the retributive theory.
Circumventing the sentencing grid: Encouraging downward departures in presumptive prison cases
Criminal Justice Policy Review, 2023
This study examines sentencing outcomes of Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) focused on reducing incarceration by encouraging downward departures to community-based sanctions in presumptive prison cases. The sample includes 3,930 defendants enrolled in the JRI program. Pre-adjudication assessment reports and a judicial settlement conference were used to help the court decide if a case warranted a departure offer. A quasi-experimental design with propensity score matching balanced JRI program defendants to 1,153 historic defendants that would have been eligible in the previous year. Logistic regressions assessed the impact of both program participation and race/ethnicity, controlling for other factors on prison versus probation sentence outcomes and sentence length in prison outcomes. On average, across all racial groups, program participants are 52% less likely to go to prison. The impact of participation on sentencing outcomes was also equitable across the race/ ethnicity of defendants. However, the program did not affect sentence length of prison outcomes.
County Level Re-Sentencing Guidelines
The sample population is composed of all offenders who were sentenced to Allegheny County jail in 2008. To understand the specific characteristics of these offenders, we collected three datasets: the 2008 sentencing data from the Commission, parole violation data from the Probation Department of Allegheny County, and the Records of Arrest and Prosecution (or-RAP-sheets‖) from the Pennsylvania State Police via the Commission.
Recent research has examined the use of the total incarceration variable. The results of these studies have shown that the factors affecting a decision to sentence an offender to jail are different than those influencing a prison sentence. These studies have suggested that disentangling jail and prison sentences will enhance our understanding of how race influences sentence outcomes. Neither of these studies examined the sentence-length portion using the expanded definition of the total incarceration variable. The research presented here examines the validity of using the total incarceration variable and whether the same factors affect the length of a jail sentence as those affecting the length of a prison sentence. The implication for future research is discussed.
Exploring the sanction–crime relationship through a lens of procedural justice
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2015
Research overwhelmingly explores "kinds of people" as moderators of the sanction-crime relationship (Piquero et al., 2011). This work, on the other hand, focuses on the sanction experience and draws upon the procedural justice doctrine and key ideas in Sherman's (1993, 2014) defiance theory to test whether individual evaluations of procedural justice condition the effect of legal sanctions on subsequent criminal behavior. Methods: Using a sample of serious adolescent offenders, generalized linear regression models with interaction terms are employed to test whether the effect of legal sanctions on involvement, variety, and frequency of offending is conditioned by procedural justice. Significant interaction effects of legal sanction and procedural justice are illustrated with graphical methods. Results: Results suggest that evaluations of procedural justice condition the sanction-crime relationship. Sanctions lead to a higher likelihood of offending among individuals with low evaluations of procedural justice. However, among those with higher evaluations of procedural justice, there is no significant relationship between sanctions and subsequent offending. Conclusion: Increasing perceptions of procedural justice reduces unintended consequences of sanctioning experiences. In an era of heightened focus on interactions between citizens and criminal justice professionals, enhancing procedural justice is not only ethical but also protects against deviance amplification processes.
Determinate Sentencing and Abolishing Parole: The Long-Term Impacts on Prisons and Crime*
Criminology, 1996
W e estimate the impact of determinate sentencing laws (DSLs) on prison commitments, prison populations, and Uniform Crime Report crime rates. Ten states enacted these laws between 1976 and 1984; all abolished parole and most established presumptive sentences. The research uses a multiple time-series design that, among other benefits, controls f o r national trends and facilitates the use of control variables. We found that DSLs are clearly associated with prison population growth in only one state, Indiana, and with major reductions in two, Minnesota and Washington. The remaining laws show no evidence of increasing populations and may have reduced them somewhat. The estimated impacts on commitments are similarly varied. There is little or no evidence that DSLs affect crime. Earlier studies evaluating individual DSLs are ofren criticized for poor research designs, and our findings support the criticisms. Determinate sentencing, with the abolition of parole, is one of the most important sentencing trends in recent decades. It was prompted mainly by beliefs that imprisonment does not effectively rehabilitate inmates and that parole board decisions are often arbitrary and are not based on the supposed rehabilitation of the prisoner (e.g., Griswold and Wiatrowski, 1983;. Those advancing determinate sentencing emphasize other goals for imprisonment, primarily deterrence, incapacitation, and "just deserts" punishment. Sentencing laws and parole practices obviously can affect prison populations. The latter have grown tremendously, by almost 350% from 1973 to 1993 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1986;. To what extent, and in which states, did determinate sentencing contribute to this * We thank the reviewers for valuable comments. The article was prepared under grant no. 88-IJ-CX-0045 from the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the Department of Justice. The data used here can be obtained from Thomas Marvel1 at Box 3002, Williamsburg, VA 23187.
Using national data from felony cases processed in state courts (n = 48,006), the current study investigates the nature and magnitude of contextual variability associated with sentencing outcomes. Multivariate models are first estimated to identify the main effects of various offender and offense variables on sentencing decisions. Conjunctive analysis is then used to evaluate the contextual variability of each of these main effects across all observed combinations of offender and offense attributes. Separate analyses are also conducted among states with and without mandatory sentencing guidelines to explore whether these guidelines reduce this variability across different contexts. Findings from this study and its comparative methods are discussed in terms of implications for future research on criminal sentencing and assessing the contextual variability of the main effects of particular legal and extralegal factors.