The Social Contexts of Racial Discrimination in Sentencing

Myers, Martha A.; Talarico, Susette M.

doi:10.2307/800707

Cited by 63 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…At the same time, when judges are not on guard for disparity correction, they may also fail to engage cognitive practices to avoid the influence of common criminal stereotypes (see Rachlinski et al, 2009), ultimately leading to sentence disadvantages for some minority offenders. As an alternative to the disparity correction perspective, it is also possible that White offenders are held to a higher standard than Black and Latino offenders and are thus punished more harshly than these groups at higher levels of criminal history (see Myers & Talarico, 1986). Future qualitative research, which is strongly needed in the study of complex sentencing decisions (see Baumer, 2013; Ulmer, 2012), will be required to tease out which of these processes is likely at work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing Outcomes: Clarifying the Role of Criminal History

Franklin

Henry

2019

Crime & Delinquency

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Racial and ethnic sentencing disparities are frequently conditioned by offender and case characteristics (e.g., gender, crime type). Offenders’ criminal history is a potentially important conditioning factor, yet this issue has only been addressed by a small body of research. Moreover, no study has examined this potential conditioning effect among Asian or Native American offenders, and prior research has typically adopted a limited theoretical approach for explaining why criminal history might condition racial disparities. The present study addresses these shortcomings in an analysis of United States Sentencing Commission data for fiscal years 2010-2012. Results indicate that race and ethnicity effects are conditioned by criminal history in important ways. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing Outcomes: Clarifying the Role of Criminal History

Franklin

Henry

2019

Crime & Delinquency

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“…The Holcomb, Williams, and Demuth (2004) study was conducted with data collected in Ohio during the 1990s, although the Baldus data used in the current study were collected from Georgia during the 1970s. Prior research has demonstrated how the specific context of sentencing practices can affect aggregate-based research outcomes (see, for example, Dixon, 1995;Myers and Talarico, 1986). The differences in outcomes may be simply a reflection of different attitudes and concerns of decision makers at different times and cultural contexts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Influence of Victim Gender in Death Penalty Cases: The Importance of Victim Race, Sex‐related Victimization, and Jury Decision Making*

Williams

Demuth²,

Holcomb

2007

Criminology

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Using data from the Baldus, Woodworth, and Pulaski (1990) study of Georgia's death penalty system, we examine the influence of victim gender in death penalty cases. Furthermore, to improve our understanding of the meaning of victim gender, we consider 1) the joint effects of victim gender and victim race, 2) victimization characteristics that might explain victim gender effects, and 3) the impact of victim gender at different decision-making stages in the death penalty case process. We find that both victim gender and race are associated with death sentencing outcomes and that an examination of the joint effects of victim gender and race reveals considerable differences in the likelihood of receiving a death sentence between the most disparate victim race-gender groups. In particular, it seems that black male victim cases are set apart from all others in terms of leniency afforded to defendants.

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“…The only support for the anticipated race effect of crime rates was provided by Myers and Talarico (1986) and Britt (2000), and those results were mixed. Myers and Talarico found that as crime rates of Georgia counties rose, the risk of imprisonment increased for both black and white defendants, but twice as much for blacks as for whites.…”

Section: Rates Of Crimementioning

confidence: 99%

Race, Ethnicity, Threat and the Labeling of Convicted Felons*

2005

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Florida law allows judges to withhold adjudication of guilt for persons who have either pled guilty or been found guilty of a felony. This provision may apply only to persons who will be sentenced to probation, and it allows such individuals to retain all civil rights and to truthfully assert they had not been convicted of a felony. This paper examines the effects of race and Hispanic ethnicity on the withholding of adjudication for 91,477 males sentenced to probation in Florida between 1999 and 2002. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling is used to assess the direct effects of defendant attributes as well as the cross-level interactions between race, ethnicity and community level indicators of threat, such as percentage black and Hispanic and concentrated disadvantage. Our results show that Hispanics and blacks are significantly less likely to have adjudication withheld when other individual and community level factors are controlled. This effect is especially pronounced for blacks and for drug offenders. Cross-level interactions show that concentrated disadvantage has a substantial effect on the adjudication withheld outcome for both black and Hispanic defendants. The implications of these results for the conceptualization of racial/ethnic threat at the individual, situational and social levels are discussed. *The authors are grateful to Gary Kleck and anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Mike Reisig for helpful suggestions at several stages in its development.

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The Social Contexts of Racial Discrimination in Sentencing

Cited by 63 publications

References 43 publications

Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing Outcomes: Clarifying the Role of Criminal History

Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing Outcomes: Clarifying the Role of Criminal History

Understanding the Influence of Victim Gender in Death Penalty Cases: The Importance of Victim Race, Sex‐related Victimization, and Jury Decision Making*

Race, Ethnicity, Threat and the Labeling of Convicted Felons*

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