Assessments Of Culpability Research Articles

Mitigation for minors: Exploring the nuances of social constructs and legal status in structuring sentences for youthful offenders

New York State is one of only two states in the nation that processes all 16- and 17-year-old defendants as adults. Contrary to this seemingly punitive stance, the state also maintains a Youthful Offender Statute that requires mitigated punishments for youths up to their 19th birthday upon court designation of youthful offender status. This study empirically examines the individual and combined impact of the social status of being a “minor” and the legally awarded status of being designated a youthful offender, upon adult court sentencing decisions framing the discussion within broader conceptualizations of youthfulness, culpability, and punishment. Utilizing a population of all youths ages 16–21 whose cases were disposed in New York between 2000 and 2006, this study finds the legally defined status of youthful offender to provide much greater mitigation at sentencing than the more general social status of being a minor. Findings are discussed as they relate to categorical and individualized assessments of culpability. In addition, as the study finds individualized assessments of culpability to be related to factors such as gender and race, broader implications for the role of court assigned statuses and mitigation of punishment are offered.

Gender differences in alcohol-related non-consensual sex; cross-sectional analysis of a student population

BackgroundSexual offences are a global public health concern. Recent changes in the law in England and Wales have dramatically altered the legal landscape of sexual offences, but sexual assaults where the victim is voluntarily intoxicated by alcohol continue to have low conviction rates. Worldwide, students are high consumers of alcohol. This research aimed to compare male and female students in relation to their knowledge and attitudes about alcohol and sexual activity and to identify factors associated with being the victim of alcohol-related non-consensual sex.Methods1,110 students completed an online questionnaire. Drinking levels were measured using the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test. Non-consensual sexual experiences were measured using the Sexual Experience Survey. Univariate and multivariate analyses were undertaken using chi square and backwards stepwise logistic regression respectively.ResultsA third of respondents had experienced alcohol-related non-consensual sex. Male and female students differed in the importance they gave to cues in deciding if a person wished to have sex with them and their understanding of the law of consent. 82.2% of women who had experienced alcohol-related non-consensual sex were hazardous drinkers compared to 62.9% who drank at lower levels (P < 0.001). Differences existed between men and women, and between those who had and had not experienced alcohol-related non-consensual sex, in relation to assessments of culpability in scenarios depicting alcohol-related intercourse. A third of respondents believed that a significant proportion of rapes were false allegations; significantly more men than women responded in this way.ConclusionsAlcohol-related coerced sexual activity is a significant occurrence among students; attitudinal and knowledge differences between males and females may explain this. Educational messages that focus upon what is deemed acceptable sexual behaviour, the law and rape myths are needed but are set against a backdrop where drunkenness is commonplace.

Kennedy, the Fall, and the Tail of Minos

In Dante's Inferno, the damned appeared before Minos, who judged the gravity of their sins and assigned their souls to their respective circles of Hell by wrapping his tail around his body. In this paper, I examine whether, in light of its decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana and its methodology for reviewing categorical exemptions from the death penalty, the Supreme Court has problematically assumed for itself the role of a kind of contemporary constitutional Minos, at least in the realm of capital punishment. First, I argue, Kennedy is a case about comparative resulting harms among violent crimes. The Kennedy dissent should have more robustly attacked the Court's categorical exemption methodology, which undervalues legitimate penological justifications for capital punishment and ultimately constitutionalizes the Court's subjective assessments of culpability and harm, allowing the Court to dictate offense seriousness, public morality, and political acceptability of the death penalty. Second, the Court's attempt to limit its holding is illusory because Kennedy's loose rhetoric and underdeveloped harm theory could jeopardize the constitutionality of any statute that permits the death penalty for a non-homicide offense, including crimes against the state, and even unintentional murders that may not satisfy the Court's own sensibilities about resulting harm. Finally, Kennedy's Minos-like approach to assessing the gravity of offenses and to imposing its own moral judgment demonstrates that there remains both relevance and legitimacy in the structural debate over the scope and exercise of judicial power, especially where that power undermines the community's reasoned efforts to cope with violent crime.

Juvenile Crime and Criminal Justice: Resolving Border Disputes

Rising juvenile crime rates over three decades spurred legal mobilizations within many state legislatures to vastly expand the transfer of adolescent criminal offenders under the age of eighteen to the jurisdiction of the criminal court. The proliferation of transfer regimes over the past several decades calls into question the very rationale for a juvenile court. Both the boundaries for transfer and mechanisms to effect it were redesigned. This redrawing of the boundary between the juvenile and adult justice systems resulted in a wholesale movement of large numbers of juveniles into the adult system, while stripping juvenile court judges of the discretion to make retail individualized assessments of culpability and dangerousness. About one in four juvenile offenders below the age of 18 now are prosecuted in adult court, most of whom are excluded from juvenile court in states where the age boundary between juvenile and criminal court has been lowered to sixteen or seventeen. The legislative line drawing process assumes that modern adolescent offenders are now criminally culpable and more dangerous at younger ages than they were in the past. These developments are challenged by evidence from developmental science about the capacities of minors for emotional regulation and behavioral control. The article examines the legal architecture and institutional design of the new boundary-drawing regime and assesses its instrumental and expressive effects, and estimates its effects on public safety and the allocation of punishments. Nearly all studies, across a range of sampling and measurement conditions, produce strong evidence that rates of juvenile offending are not lower in states where it is relatively more common to try adolescents as adults. Transferring adolescent offenders to the criminal court exposes them to harsh and sometimes toxic forms of punishment that have the perverse effect of increasing criminal activity. Juveniles who have been tried and sentenced as adults are more likely to re-offend, more quickly and for more serious offenses, than their counterparts who have been tried as juveniles. The criminalization of adolescent crime is an ineffective and dangerous means of crime control that may actually compromise public safety. Individualized and neutral decision making and greater regulation of eligibility can reduce and mitigate the excessive reach of modern transfer laws while preserving the important legitimating functions of waiver.

Strict Liability and the Mitigation of Moral Luck

Strict Liability and the Mitigation of Moral Luck

Factors impacting the assessment of maternal culpability in cases of alleged fetal abuse.

These studies explored attitudes toward maternal culpability in cases of alleged fetal abuse. In experiment one, general culpability for the use of various substances during pregnancy was assessed as well as the impact of other potentially relevant factors. One hundred and twenty students completed the survey. Participants overwhelmingly supported treating drug use by pregnant women as a criminal offense. With regard to the assessment of more specific questions, the lack of consensus regarding what factors effect culpability is striking. Experiment two examined the possible impact of the mothers' race (White or Black) and social class (Poor or Middle class) on the assessment of culpability. One hundred and sixty-four community members responded to a survey sent to randomly selected persons in upstate South Carolina. The results indicate that at least in response to a brief, written, case scenario, neither race nor social class make a large impact on participants' sanction recommendations.

Street Crime, Corporate Crime, and the Contingency of Criminal Liability

This article describes how criminal liability is contingent on two sets of factors: (1) criminal law's alternatives?civil, administrative and even non-legal strategies for addressing wrongdoing, and (2) choices in how we acknowledge social influences, instrumental goals, and the social costs of punishment. Moral culpability is weighed against utilitarian concerns in decisions to impose criminal sanctions. Further, even the assessment of culpability itself is mediated by utilitarian concerns driven by criminal law's alternatives. Conduct that can be effectively addressed non-criminally seems less culpable (despite explicit coverage by criminal law), and that makes utilitarian concerns?and civil sanctions and remedies?more likely to prevail when balanced against the need for retributive judgment of wrongdoing. This dynamic arises because criminal law's long-standing twin rationales, retributivism and deterrence, sometimes conflict in the response they counsel for culpable wrongdoing. In practice, criminal liability is not explained by culpability, nor by the familiar grounds for prosecutorial discretion?state resources limits, first-offense status, or marginal resulting harm. Neither do these considerations explain the wide variance in its use across the landscape of crime, from white-collar to settings. The way we actually employ criminal liability demonstrates the contingency of criminal law, and culpability itself, on civil alternatives and social costs, and this has distributive implications. We use criminal liability for wrongdoing much more than we do for white-collar wrongdoing; that variation cannot be explained by distinctions in those two settings, sets of offenders, or feasible alternative remedies. Yet reasons for it explain why we have yet to move street crime policy in the productive direction that increasingly characterizes white collar policy.

Street Crime, Corporate Crime and the Contingency of Criminal Liability

This article describes how criminal liability is contingent on two sets of factors: (1) criminal law's alternatives?civil, administrative and even non-legal strategies for addressing wrongdoing, and (2) choices in how we acknowledge social influences, instrumental goals, and the social costs of punishment. Moral culpability is weighed against utilitarian concerns in decisions to impose criminal sanctions. Further, even the assessment of culpability itself is mediated by utilitarian concerns driven by criminal law's alternatives. Conduct that can be effectively addressed non-criminally seems less culpable (despite explicit coverage by criminal law), and that makes utilitarian concerns?and civil sanctions and remedies?more likely to prevail when balanced against the need for retributive judgment of wrongdoing. This dynamic arises because criminal law's long-standing twin rationales, retributivism and deterrence, sometimes conflict in the response they counsel for culpable wrongdoing. In practice, criminal liability is not explained by culpability, nor by the familiar grounds for prosecutorial discretion?state resources limits, first-offense status, or marginal resulting harm. Neither do these considerations explain the wide variance in its use across the landscape of crime, from white-collar to settings. The way we actually employ criminal liability demonstrates the contingency of criminal law, and culpability itself, on civil alternatives and social costs, and this has distributive implications. We use criminal liability for wrongdoing much more than we do for white-collar wrongdoing; that variation cannot be explained by distinctions in those two settings, sets of offenders, or feasible alternative remedies. Yet reasons for it explain why we have yet to move street crime policy in the productive direction that increasingly characterizes white collar policy.

Culpability and Accountability of Hospitalized Injured Alcohol-Impaired Drivers

During the three-year period ending October 1982, driver records, crash reports, and blood alcohol concentrations were correlated for 56 alcohol-impaired drivers injured seriously enough to warrant hospital admission. Blood alcohol concentration levels exceeded 0.15 vol% in all patients. Despite a high level of suspicion of alcohol involvement and assessment of culpability by the law enforcement officer at the scene, there were no convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) among this problem-drinker population. Injury seems to offer additional protection from enforcement of DUI statutes and, if the patient survives his injuries, allows the offender to resume driving without interdiction.