The Political Context of Sentencing: An Analysis of Community and Individual Determinants

Helms, Ronald; Jacobs, David

doi:10.1353/sof.2003.0012

Cited by 123 publications

(126 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…For this paper's purpose, it is sufficient to just examine the sign and the statistical significance of the Tobit coefficients. Recent social science research has shown a growing application of Tobit models [29,36]. Table 3 shows the results of the Tobit analysis.…”

Section: Other Explanatory Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prison privatization: a perspective on core governmental functions

Jing

2010

Crime Law Soc Change

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Prison privatization in the US illustrates the challenge of privatization to the traditional state monopoly over "inherently governmental" functions. From a perspective on core governmental functions, this paper provides a new logical explanation of this phenomenon and argues that prison privatization demonstrates the political rationality of governments. Conservative social control and economic neoliberalism were two major political reasons for prison privatization in the US. These factors aggravated the instrumental problems of the public prison system and reinforced the urgency to address them. This logic is applied to explain the variation in the magnitude of prison privatization in the 50 states. Drawing on the results of a Tobit analysis, this paper confirms that both political factors and instrumental factors significantly influence the preference of state governments for prison privatization.

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Section: Other Explanatory Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prison privatization: a perspective on core governmental functions

Jing

2010

Crime Law Soc Change

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“…We include an indicator representing conservative political support in the community since the most conservative communities have been shown to rely on prison to a greater extent than their more liberal counterparts (Jacobs & Helms 1996;Helms & Jacobs 2002;Helms 2009;Helms & Costanza 2009 …”

Section: G Conservative Political Supportmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data underlying this analysis do not allow any more detailed insight regarding this possibility. However, the sentencing research seems to support this speculation since many researchers have argued that judges and prosecutors share the underlying values of their constituents and are typically elected and/or must stand for re-election (Helms & Jacobs, 2002;Helms, 2009;Helms & Costanza, 2010). This ever-present reality may be expected to shape the courtroom calculus concerning offenders so that in the most politically conservative jurisdictions judges and prosecutors lean more strongly toward incarceration.…”

Section: International Journal Of Social Science Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The punishment literature provides a variety of clues that can assist in formulating actionable remedies. For example, there is evidence that variation in structured environments and ascribed characteristics of offenders correlate with punishment severity (Hogg 2011;Helms and Costanza 2010;Paternoster, Brame, Bacon, & Ditchfield, 2004;Helms 2009;Helms & Jacobs, 2002;Hallett, 2002;Feld, 1991). These and other studies offer conclusive evidence that more severe sanctions are leveled at offenders from disorganized, minority and economically disadvantaged environments (Note 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Inequality and County-Level Correlates of State Prison Releases and Releases from Community Supervision

Helms

Costanza²,

Gutierrez³

2016

IJSSR

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Prisoner reentry is an important contemporary policy concern as many ex-convicts reenter communities uneducated and unprepared to compete in local labor markets. This study uses data from the 2003 National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) for the states of California, Illinois and Washington to examine contextual correlates of reentry patterns. The analyses reveal systematic correlates of releases from both incarceration and community supervision that highlight a diverse array of difficulties for offenders returning to their home community. The results of this study underscore the often-difficult transitions facing reentering offenders and support policy implications for those who oversee reentry processes.

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“…The urban conditions that explain police department size (Jacobs 1979;Kent and Jacobs 2005), arrest rates (Brown and Warner 1992), or the use of deadly force by the police (Jacobs and O'Brien 1998) have been researched as well. Yet except for a few studies that assess how community and individual determinants combine to affect the sentencing of non-capital offenders (Helms and Jacobs 2002;Myers and Talarico 1987), there is little research on the combined effects of individual and contextual determinants. But the many results based on aggregate data showing that context is a strong determinant of multiple criminal justice outcomes make it difficult to believe that such environmental factors do not influence post-sentencing decisions about executions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Survives on Death Row? An Individual and Contextual Analysis

et al. 2007

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What are the relationships between death row offender attributes, social arrangements, and executions? Partly because public officials control executions, theorists view this sanction as intrinsically political. Although the literature has focused on offender attributes that lead to death sentences, the post-sentencing stage is at least as important. States differ sharply in their willingness to execute and less than 10 percent of those given a death sentence are executed. To correct the resulting problems with censored data, this study uses a discrete-time event history analysis to detect the individual and state-level contextual factors that shape execution probabilities. The findings show that minority death row inmates convicted of killing whites face higher execution probabilities than other capital offenders. Theoretically relevant contextual factors with explanatory power include minority presence in nonlinear form, political ideology, and votes for Republican presidential candidates. Inasmuch as there is little or no systematic research on the individual and contextual factors that influence execution probabilities, these findings fill important gaps in the literature.

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The Political Context of Sentencing: An Analysis of Community and Individual Determinants

Cited by 123 publications

References 67 publications

Prison privatization: a perspective on core governmental functions

Prison privatization: a perspective on core governmental functions

Social Inequality and County-Level Correlates of State Prison Releases and Releases from Community Supervision

Who Survives on Death Row? An Individual and Contextual Analysis

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