The effects of lynchings on criminal justice outcomes have seldom been examined. Recent findings also are inconsistent about the effects of race on imprisonments. This study uses a pooled time-series design to assess lynching and racial threat effects on state imprisonments from 1972 to 2000. After controlling for Republican strength, conservatism, and other factors, lynch rates explain the growth in admission rates. The findings also show that increases in black residents produce subsequent expansions in imprisonments that likely are attributable to white reactions to this purported menace. But after the percentage of blacks reaches a substantial threshold—and the potential black vote becomes large enough to begin to reduce these harsh punishments—reductions in prison admissions occur. These results also confirm a political version of racial threat theory by indicating that increased Republican political strength produces additional imprisonments.

Contentious debates on immigrants in the United States has led to growing interest in their treatment in the criminal justice system. Much of what is known, however, springs from research that treats immigrants as a homogeneous group. The lumping of all immigrants into one category potentially mask variances in sentencing based on national origins. The current study disaggregates federal sentencing data to explore whether length of sentence differs by the defendants' geographical region of citizenship. After controlling for a number of legal and extra-legal factors, sentences imposed upon Mexican citizens were found to be longer than sentences meted out to defendants who are citizens of other countries. Evidence suggesting that national origin has a stronger influence on sentence length than race/ethnicity and legal status was also detected. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Although researchers have acknowledged the importance of environmental and contextual factors in the judicial decision-making process, there is a lack of attention to sentencing decisions and outcomes in territorial courts of the United States. Drawing on the focal concerns perspective, this study analyzes the sentences of 583 federal defendants sentenced in the District Court of the United States Virgin Islands between 1997 and 2004. The findings reveal that net of legally relevant factors, Hispanics receive harsher sentences than blacks, and legal aliens receive prison sentences that are significantly longer than those received by U.S. citizens. However, the influence of legal alien status is driven by the harsher sentences imposed on defendants who are citizens of the Dominican Republic. The meaning and implications of the influence of citizenship status and race/ethnicity in a context where race/ethnicity are not overriding statuses, as they are on the U.S. mainland, are discussed.

Research exploring attitudes toward the death penalty is common in the field of criminal justice. Additionally, a substantial body of literature has examined public perceptions of sex offenders and punishment in the U.S. Unfortunately, few studies have sought to examine perceptions of the death penalty in relation to sexual offending. This study contributes to the literature by examining perceptions of the college students at a mid-sized university in the Southeastern United States as they relate to support for the death penalty in cases of sexual assault across victim age categories. Findings suggest that respondent perceptions are shaped by biological sex, political affiliation, college major, fear of crime, and parents’ level of education, and these relationships are uniform across victim age categories. Further, support for the death penalty appears inversely related with victim age.

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