Extralegal Variables Research Articles

Death Penalty Disposition in China: What Matters?

In theory, sentencing decisions should be driven by legal factors, not extra-legal factors. However, some empirical research on the death penalty in the United States shows significant relationships between offender and victim characteristics and death sentence decisions. Despite the fact that China frequently imposes death sentences, few studies have examined these sanctions to see if similar correlations occur in China's capital cases. Using data from published court cases in China involving three violent crimes-homicide, robbery, and intentional assault-this study examines the net impact of offender's gender, race, and victim-offender relationship on death sentence decisions in China. Our overall multiple regression results indicate that, after controlling for other legal and extra-legal variables, an offender's gender, race, and victim-offender relationship did not produce similar results in China when compared with those in the United States. In contrast, it is the legal factors that played the most significant role in influencing the death penalty decisions. The article concludes with explanations and speculations on the unique social, cultural, and legal conditions in China that may have contributed to these correlations.

Exploring Lawyer Misconduct: An Examination of the Self-Regulation Process

ABSTRACTAlthough white-collar professionals are often held in high esteem, sometimes persons in privileged positions engage in misconduct. Unfortunately, very little is known about the correlates associated with professional misconduct and even less is known about the sanctioning process among lawyers who are licensed by state bar associations and therefore subject to the bar rules regulating their professional conduct. We examine 213 complaints filed in one fiscal year with the Florida Bar, alleging attorney misconduct and evaluate the factors that influence whether the complaint continued through, or was discarded at, each stage of the self-regulated grievance process. Using selection models that examine both the staff’s decision to send a case forward to the grievance committee as well as the grievance committee’s recommendation about sanctioning the lawyer, results show that both legal and extra-legal variables are related to these two processes.

Search for the Hidden Punishments: An Alternative Approach to Studying Alternative Sanctions

Most existing studies of sentencing focus on the decision of whether or not to incarcerate a convicted individual. However, many cases do not involve incarceration, and there is a considerable amount of freedom to mete out alternative sanctions as part of a sentencing decision. This study addresses this gap in the literature by investigating the patterns of sentences among those individuals not sentenced to prison. This study used latent class analysis (LCA) to identify unobserved “classes” based on packages of sentences, which may involve both jail and non-incarceration alternative sanctions imposed on defendants not sentenced to prison. This study also demonstrates the potential use of LCA by (1) comparing and contrasting the results of LCA and the sentence severity scale approach, and (2) investigating how class membership could be explained by legal and extralegal characteristics of the cases. LCA identified four latent classes among individuals who were not sentenced to prison, two of which could not be differentiated by the severity scale approach. Regression models demonstrated that legal variables were better at explaining the incarceration decision, whereas extralegal variables were better at explaining some of the margins between the classes. Compared with the incarceration models and severity scales, LCA revealed variations that could not be detected by either of the approaches. LCA also has the potential to be a helpful tool in future analysis of sentencing decisions utilizing large-scale, administrative datasets.

The Effects of Legal and Extralegal Variables on the Sentences of Sex Offenders

A large body of research has examined the relationship between extralegal factors—such as the age, race, and gender of the offender—on sentencing decisions. Some of these studies, especially those examining the sentencing outcomes of sex offenders, have also included an examination of victim characteristics—including age, race, gender, victim-offender relationship, and negative victim characteristics. Overall, the results from these studies are mixed. The current study attempts to further unravel these relationships by examining the impact of legal and extralegal factors, including both victim and offender characteristics, on the decision to sentence sex offenders to prison and the length of their prison term. The findings indicate that no extralegal offender characteristics had an impact on judges’ decisions to sentence an offender to prison, nor did they impact sentence length. Victim age was the only extralegal victim characteristic that impacted the prison decision and there were no extralegal victim characteristics that impacted sentence length.

Police Charging Practices for Incidents of Intimate Partner Violence in Canada

Objectives: To examine police charging practices in case of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada. Methods: In this national level study, we explore police charging in cases of IPV using data from the 2008 Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey. Using logistic regression, we examine the impact of several key legal and extralegal factors on the police charging decisions. Results: Analysis shows that, while the majority of cases were cleared by charge, the proportion of cases in which police recommended a charge varied across the country. Further, the majority of legal and extralegal variables examined were significantly associated with the police decision to lay a charge across the jurisdictions examined, including the presence of victim injury, multiple victims, offence type as well as gender of the victim and the victim–accused relationship. Conclusion: Study findings indicate that future research on police charging in cases of IPV require more precise examinations of the role played by gender and the type of relationship as well as an investigation of the community context in which police decisions are made.

Race and Context in the Criminal Labeling of Drunk Driving Offenders

This research seeks to add a new dimension to the growing body of literature investigating disparities in sentencing outcomes. Our study used multilevel modeling techniques to incorporate legal and extralegal individual-level variables with macro-level data in an examination of the factors influencing the formal application of the criminal label when identical noncriminal sanctions are available. Results suggest that measures of police racial profiling are predictive of unfavorable plea outcomes and subsequent application of a criminal label. Findings indicated that the likelihood of receiving an unfavorable criminal plea bargain was greater for men, non-Whites, defendants with a prior arrest, defendants arrested in areas of low concentrated disadvantage, and defendants arrested in areas with high levels of racial profiling. In addition, both concentrated disadvantage and stop disparity conditioned the effect of race on plea outcome.

Race and Cumulative Discrimination in the Prosecution of Criminal Defendants

Most research investigates the effect of a defendant’s race on severity of imposed legal sanction at only one of several decision points that comprise the criminal justice system. This myopic focus on what can be termed episodic discrimination is problematic because racial discrimination evinced at one decision point may be amplified, negated, or even reversed at other decision points. Here we synthesize estimates of a defendant’s race on the severity of imposed legal sanction at each of the decision points encountered by a defendant as he or she progresses through the criminal justice system. Although initial results show that the effect of race on severity of outcome depends on the specific decision point analyzed, a synthesis of these race estimates in a meta-analysis reveals that the odds of receiving a severe sanction is approximately 42% higher for a Black defendant even after controlling for prior record and other legal and extralegal variables. Thus, although the influence of a defendant’s race on the severity of sanction is statistically discernible at just two of the eight criminal justice decision points, a substantive cumulative racial discriminatory effect is evident when all the individual decision points are considered in their totality.

Prosecutorial discretion for domestic violence cases: an examination of the effects of offender race, ethnicity, gender, and age

Much of the existing literature on courts and sentencing has focused on judicial decision-making. Prior research on prosecutorial decision-making is more limited, with even less attention paid to the prosecution of domestic violence cases. The research that has been conducted has produced inconsistent results regarding the effects of legal and extralegal variables. The current study focuses on the effects of extralegal suspect characteristics on the decision to dismiss domestic violence cases in a large Midwestern county from June 2009 to December 2009. The findings demonstrate that gender and race have a strong influence on prosecutors’ decisions to dismiss charges in domestic violence cases. Contrary to the focal concerns perspective, however, the results indicate that males and Black and Hispanic offenders are more likely to have their cases dismissed. Implications for future research are discussed.

An Examination of the Influence of Strength of Evidence Variables in the Prosecution’s Decision to Dismiss Driving While Intoxicated Cases

The majority of research examining prosecutorial discretion has focused on legal factors such as the seriousness of the offense or the extra-legal characteristics of the accused including race/ethnicity and gender. The amount of variance explained by court researchers, however, remains quite low. The present study extends previous research examining the primary determinants of prosecutor’s decision to dismiss or fully prosecute focusing on driving while intoxicated cases. We focus on the predictive contribution of the strength of evidence relative to legal and extra-legal variables. The data consist of 2,358 driving while intoxicated cases filed in Harris County, Texas during the first 8 months of 1999. The findings strongly support the inclusion of strength of evidence variables in court research and further suggest their past omission may have attributed significance to spurious relationships.

Judicial discretion in federal sentencing

Q uestions about who has authority to make which decisions with how much discretion has occupied the attention of organizational sociologists for years. As applied to the criminal legal system, the focus is on judicial and prosecutorial discretion. After decades of allowing judges extensive discretion within broadly defined statutory limits, coupled with unreviewable sentence outcomes in both federal and state courts, critics in the early 1970s and 1980s argued for limitations on judicial discretion (Frankel, 1972). Critics argued that judicial discretion produced uncertainty and disparity in sentence severity. Some social scientists found that that federal sentence disparity prior to reforms of the 1980s was linked to extralegal variables such as the defendant’s race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status (Albonetti, 1998, 1999; Hagan, Nagel, and Albonetti, 1982; Nagel and Hagan, 1982; Peterson and Hagan, 1984; Weisburd, Wheeler, Waring, and Bode, 1991; Wheeler, Weisburd, and Bode, 1982). Other researchers found no significant relationship between defendant’s socioeconomic status and sentence severity (Benson and Walker, 1988).

Assessing the relevance of legal and extralegal factors in felony drug sentencing: the case of Michigan

Previous research has identified several prominent legal and extralegal variables and their effect on sentencing outcomes. However, only a few states have been subjected to critical or scholarly analysis. With the focal concerns perspective in mind, the current study examines 399 male defendants convicted on federal drug trafficking charges in the state of Michigan during 2006. Findings reveal that legally relevant factors are the strongest predictor of sentence length, offenders who are detained prior to trial face disparate sentences, and district in which the defendant was adjudicated significantly impacts sentence outcome. These results confirm that case processing strategies are an important source of sentencing disparities.

Automatic Judgment and Reasoning About Punishment

Several studies provide evidence that judgments on punishment are influenced by variables that are more or less independent of guilt considerations. It is postulated that these so called extralegal variables, such as the victim’s reputation or outcome severity that occurs accidentally and without intention by the offender, in particular influence judgments that are made under restricted cognitive capacity (low processing depth). Two studies, using a vignette methodology, explore whether participants are able to correct the biasing influences of extralegal variables if they are motivated to elaborate their judgments under the most optimal conditions (high processing depth). Study 1 investigates the influence of victim’s reputation, and Study 2 the combined influence of victim’s reputation and accidentally occurring outcome severity under either low or high depth of information processing. Results show that the influence of extralegal variables can be corrected. However, corrections are either limited or excessive, and are sometimes even inappropriate.

Contexts of Decision Making in the Juvenile Justice System: An Organizational Approach to Understanding Minority Overrepresentation

Significant advances have been made in our understanding of the origins and dynamics of minority overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system. Nevertheless, much remains to be learned. In this article, the authors explore the impact of race on juvenile justice processing by examining the organizational contexts in which decisions are made. They offer a theoretical framework that combines insights from organizational theory and the focal concerns perspective and that focuses on the organizational players (action sets) involved in decision making from intake to final disposition. Based on the composition of action sets, and their corresponding value orientations, the authors make predictions regarding the influence of sociodemographic, legal, and extralegal variables at each processing juncture. The empirical test provides a reasonably good fit with the data. Implications for further research are discussed.

The effect of the deliberation process and jurors' prior legal knowledge on the sentence: the role of psychological expertise and crime scene photo

An experiment with simulated juries (N = 198) tested the impact of the deliberation process and two extra legal variables on the determination of sentence. Participants were either social science students without prior instruction in criminal law (prior legal knowledge: low-level group) or future professional magistrates completing their final year of training (high-level group). We manipulated the presence versus absence of (i) a non-diagnostic observation of the defendant by a psychology expert and (ii) a realistic crime scene photograph. After controlling for participants' gender and age, our results show that the high-level group was both less sensitive to the manipulated variables and more severe in their sentence than low-level jurors. We observed a post-deliberation increase in pre-deliberation bias such that the non-diagnostic psychological expertise had a stronger post-deliberation impact on the sentence. Finally, an unexpected effect showed that aggressive responses during the psychological observation tended to operate as exculpatory rather than accusatory evidence. Our results are discussed on the basis of previous research and proposals for future research are made.

Is Justice Blind? An Examination of Disparities in Homicide Sentencing in Colombia, 1980-2000

Evidence has repeatedly shown that disparities in crime sentences can be attributed to certain variables considered outside the legal dimensions of the case. The majority of research that investigates factors that contribute to such disparities has primarily focused on crimes of varying severities adjudicated in the U.S. court system. We expand research on this topic by focusing on disparities in homicide sentences using data from over 9000 homicide cases tried in Colombia from 1980 – 2000. We specifically explore whether judges use substantive rationality when deciding the length of the offender’s sentence and if the sentence should be above the legal minimum set for the severity of the crime according to the criminal code under which it is adjudicated. Results reveal that disparities in homicide sentences can be attributed to extra-legal variables such as: the city in which the homicide trial took place, where the body of the victim was retrieved, and whether the defendant was identified by an ID parade. However, we also find evidence that suggests that legal variables such as the defendant’s previous criminal record and the aggravating circumstances of the case engender greater differences in sentence outcomes than non-legal variables previously mentioned. Explanations and policy implications are discussed.

Sentencing policy and disparity: Guidelines and the influence of legal and democratic subcultures

This study analyzed the effects of sentencing policy on sentencing outcomes and the determinants of sentencing decisions. The authors used hierarchical modeling to examine the impact of sentencing reform on legal and individual- and county-level extralegal factors in addition to the sentencing outcomes themselves. The research was framed within the legal and democratic subculture perspective developed by Richardson and Vines (1970) for understanding lower court decision making. The results indicated that sentencing policy acts as a filter, through which cues from each subculture are synthesized, and helps to shape the effects of both legal and extralegal variables on sentencing outcomes.

Age, Racial/Ethnic Minority Status, Gender and Misdemeanor Sentencing

ABSTRACT Researchers have increasingly examined interactions between various combinations of legal and extralegal variables to explain disparities in felony criminal sentencing decisions. This paper focuses on the combined effects of extralegal variables such as age, racial/ethnic minority status, and gender have on misdemeanor criminal sentencing. Results indicate that adult, White males experienced the harshest fine amounts, while young, young adult, and adult racial/ethnic minority males had a higher likelihood of receiving other punitive sentences in addition to, or rather than just a fine. The results provide support for competing theoretical approaches of contextual discrimination and focal concerns. The implications for racial/ethnic bias in lower court decisions are discussed.

The Relationship Between Type of Attorney and Bail Amount Set for Hispanic Defendants

This research empirically examines the difference that type of counsel, public or private, makes in the bail amount set for Hispanic defendants. Data were collected on all felony defendants assigned to the district court in a midwestern county. Specifically, the authors hypothesized that Hispanic defendants who retain the assistance of private counsel will receive lower bail amounts than defendants assigned a court-appointed attorney. Several independent controls were employed including the legal variables— offense seriousness and prior arrests —and the extralegal variables— sex, age, and residency . These data were analyzed using ordinary least squares multiple regression. The analyses show that although Hispanic defendants utilizing private counsel receive lower bail amounts than defendants assigned a court-appointed attorney, only the variables age, residency, and offense seriousness significantly affect bail amount set.

The Impact of Relationship Status, Gender, and Minor Status in the Police Response to Domestic Assaults

Data from police records on 320 domestic violence calls for assistance collected during a four-month period from five jurisdictions operating under a pro-arrest statute in a Northeastern state were examined to determine the distribution of incidents by victim-suspect household relationship. It was hypothesized that, despite the lack of any statutory distinction, police compliance with the requirements of a pro-arrest statute—and mandatory arrest policies—would be higher in incidents involving a parent complainant than in incidents between other household members. Logistic and ordinary least-squares regression indicated that the odds of arrest for cases of child to parent and sibling assault were significantly higher than for other kinds of relationships, especially adult partner cases. Analyses also revealed that police compliance with victim assistance actions was significantly less likely for victims of parent to child and sibling violence relative to other victim-suspect relationships. The police were also more legalistic in the application of the statute to both female victims and female suspects. The implications of the increased role of extra-legal variables in the arrest decision (i.e. age, gender and relationship status) and the police support of parental authority are examined.

Intimate Partner Violence

This article seeks to identify the variables that predict intimate partner violence recidivism. Neither prosecutorial actions, such as case rejection or subsequent dismissal, nor judicial imposition of jail terms or placement in a batterer treatment program demonstrated predictive value. Extralegal variables associated with the defendant, such as cohabitation status, marital status, gender, employment, and substance use at the time of the incident, all failed to attain significance. Victim support for arrest and prosecution were also unrelated to revictimization. Conversely, use of a weapon, the offender's prior arrest for any offense, and the presence of a protective order at the time of the precipitating incident all predicted rearrest for intimate violence within an 18-month follow-up period. Policy implications are discussed.