A Hazard of New Fortunes: State Sentencing Reform in the United States, 1975 -2000

Abstract

The law and sociology literature has extensively examined the stages of legal reform: the construction of a social problem, the creation of a new legal innovation to address the problem, and the diffusion of that innovation over time. This paper contributes to an understanding of the interrelationship between these processes. Using a case study of the determinacy movement in criminal sentencing that began in the 1970s and proceeded to the end of the decade, the paper offers empirical support for the proposition that the character of problem-construction and innovation affects the likelihood that a given legal reform will successfully diffuse. Two general relationships are observed. First, when multiple innovations are addressed to a single social problem, a given reform is less likely to diffuse. Second, where the construction of a social problem is highly contingent on a specific reform movement or community of reform operatives, multiple innovations are more likely because of the susceptibility of the problem to redefinition. Problem-construction that is highly dependent on social context is thus also likely to decrease the likelihood of diffusion of a legal reform.