Cita: Wright, Erik Olin y Perrone, Lucas (1977

No abstract

This conceptual article uses an interpretive approach to legal decision-making to explain the operation of crime stereotypes in the courts. A model is proposed to address the social psychological dynamics involved in assessing both conforming and exceptional cases. Evaluated against the backdrop of prevailing stereotypes, conforming cases may be disposed of routinely, while exceptional cases present cognitive dilemmas for court actors. In that stereotypes are internalized as enduring mental structures, the latters' dispositions require a more probing search for an explanation of the crime than is necessary with more typical offenses. Legal decisions in exceptional cases are influenced by the meaning court actors attribute to the offense within the context of the offender's alternative (i.e., noncriminal) social statuses. A series of interrelated propositions based on these arguments is formulated.

Despite an extensive literature on differential justice, relatively few studies have examined whether inequities occur in legal decisions that precede sentencing. This becomes a problem given the vast majority of criminal cases prosecuted in the United States are disposed of through guilty pleas to reduced charges. In an effort to address this issue, the current study examined legal, status, and resource determinants of both charge reductions and final dispositions in cases of burglary and robbery in two U.S. jurisdictions. While the analysis showed that social status influenced the acquisition of private counsel and pretrial release, resources that tended to favor defendants at final disposition, the expectation that charge reductions might be especially receptive to status influences was not supported. Only one direct status effect on charge reductions was obtained and no indirect influences appear to have been operating. Further, contrary to the dominant thesis, the direct effects of race/ethnicity on charge reductions and final dispositions point to less severe responses to minorities, responses that we suggest may have been the result of initial overcharging in cases of minority defendants.

Research on differential justice suggests the need for analyses of the independent and interactive effects of offender and victim social characteristics on judicial decisions. The article that follows addresses this issue through an application of analysis of variance to data on the adjudication of cases in homicide (N = 444 defendants and 432 victims). The findings of the study suggest that male defendants, white, female, and higher-status victims, and lower-status persons held in the death of those of higher status elicit the more severe legal response. We argue that this pattern may be a product of an interpretive process wherein authorities come to rely on the social attributes of actors in arriving at determinations of culpability in an offense characterized by complex social relationships. That the analysis reveals no differences in the adjudication of inter- and intraracial and inter- and intragender offenses, or independent effects of the defendant's race or occupational prestige on adjudication also has implications for the findings of prior research in these areas.