Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2758

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End date: 2024Subject: search.filters.subject.Sentencing

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    Federal Probation Officers and Sentencing Disparity: Examining the Role of Extralegal Factors in Guidelines Calculations
    (2024) Mullaly, Cara; Johnson, Brian; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Over the years, the relationship between extralegal factors and federal sentencing disparity has attracted a significant amount of research attention. Much of this work, however, has focused on judicial and prosecutorial decision-making, largely ignoring other influential actors. One such actor is the federal probation officer. Using data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, this study explores the relationship between extralegal factors and federal probation officer’s guidelines calculations. This study uses a theoretical framework that combines focal concerns and causal attributions to argue that federal probation officers attribute the causes of criminal activity differently across demographic groups, shaping their perception of the defendant’s blameworthiness and dangerousness and ultimately resulting in differing guidelines calculations. Findings showed mixed support for the hypotheses in this study. After discussing the results and limitations of the current study, I provide direction for future study of federal probation officers and their influence on federal sentencing outcomes.
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    Victim Participation: Does it Impact Sentencing Departures?
    (2023) Neff, Heidi; Johnson, Brian D; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Prior analyses of sentencing practices find that victim characteristics affect sentencing decisions. Yet, the impact of victim participation on sentencing departures has largely been ignored in research on victim involvement in the punishment process. The present study examines this important, although rarely empirically tested, aspect of sentencing. Using data from the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, this study examines the impact of multiple forms of victim participation on sentencing departures in the context of both person and property offenses. Given that victim characteristics are known to influence sentencing, the study also investigates whether victim vulnerability moderates the relationship between victim participation and departure decisions. Findings support that victim participation influences sentencing decisions for both offense types, demonstrating that sentences are more severe, on average, when victim participation significantly affects departures. Findings for the interaction between victim participation and vulnerability, however, are less clear, which raises questions about whether certain victims’ participation influences decision-making differently.
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    THE EFFECTS OF GENDER ON PHYSICAL CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT SENTENCING IN MARYLAND CIRCUIT COURTS
    (2018) Lafferty, Jennifer Margaret Bewton; Simpson, Sally; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Researchers have identified child abuse as a major social problem in the United States, yet research on physical child abuse and neglect sentencing is limited. Prior to this study, sentencing research has mostly overlooked physical child abuse and neglect as a distinct crime. As physical child abuse and neglect are so contrary to traditional notions of femininity, studying the effects of gender on sentencing for these narrowly defined crimes presents an opportunity to focus on females as countertypes. The findings here imply that the effects of being female (a countertype) increases for the most serious crime, first degree child abuse, in both the decision to incarcerate and on the sentence length.
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    PROSECUTION AND SENTENCING OF WHITE COLLAR CRIME IN FEDERAL COURT: UNDERSTANDING PATHS AND PROCESSES
    (2018) Galvin, Miranda A; Simpson, Sally S; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The question of whether ‘white collar’ crimes are treated more leniently by society dates to the first use of the phrase by Edwin Sutherland in 1939. One of the most important ways in which this leniency may manifest is in the criminal prosecution and sentencing of violations of law. And yet, the question of whether and how white collar cases are treated differently than other types of crimes has not received sufficient attention. Prior research findings have been clouded by inconsistent effects and inconsistent definitions of white collar crime and may have limited generalizability under modern sentencing regimes. This dissertation reconsiders the question of white collar leniency for a sample of white collar and comparable crimes referred for federal criminal prosecution between 2009-2011 and followed through 2013 using the Federal Justice Statistics Program. Specifically, this research considers how case complexity affects the likelihood of plea bargains, and how these bargains in turn affect sentencing outcomes. Additionally, this dissertation explores whether white collar cases receive more lenient sentencing outcomes, and the effect that different definitions have on substantive conclusions.
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    MINDING THE GAP: AN EVALUATION OF THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF EVIDENCE-BASED SENTENCING ON SOCIAL INEQUALITY
    (2018) Richardson, Rebecca; Johnson, Brian; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Social inequality has been a popular topic of inquiry in the criminal sentencing literature for decades, but the effects of innovations like evidence-based sentencing on inequality have not been investigated. Evidence-based sentencing, the use of actuarial assessments to inform sentencing decisions, is a data-driven approach to sentencing that highlights public safety, promotes more selective and effective use of incarceration, and may foster both transparency and objectivity in punishment decisions. However, the practice is not without its critics, and one of the more prominent criticisms of evidence-based sentencing is that it will worsen social inequality in sentencing. This dissertation uses simulation procedures and a unique dataset that combines official court records from Connecticut with results from Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) risk assessments to inform that concern. An assessment of disparities in Connecticut’s current sentencing system reveals disparities according to race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) that cannot be fully explained by legal and case processing characteristics or by risk factors drawn directly from the LSI-R. Several risk factors, most notably those related to offenders’ residential situation, companions, mental health, and attitudes toward convention and the criminal justice system, also have their own direct influences on punishment. Disparities in LSI-R composite and domain scores are observable as well. While similar composite scores mask substantial variation across domain scores for racial, ethnic, and gender groups, low-SES offenders receive higher scores in every domain and in the composite, regardless of which SES indicator is considered. A simulation procedure further shows that disparities in the LSI-R have the potential to translate into disparities in punishment that exceed those already present in Connecticut, particularly in the decision to incarcerate. This dissertation suggests that evidence-based sentencing may come at a social cost. It underscores the need for more empirical research on evidence-based sentencing and sources of sociodemographic inequality in punishment. It also invites discussion about the treatment of low-SES offenders in the criminal justice system, about whether actuarial risk assessments designed for correctional settings can and should be adapted to inform sentencing decisions, and about the tenuous balance between effectiveness and fairness in sentencing.
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    THE WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE IN DRUG CASES: A MULTI-METHOD STUDY OF DISCRETION AND SENTENCING IN TEXAS
    (2017) Lee, Jacqueline; Johnson, Brian D; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    While guilty pleas dominate criminal sentencing, researchers are still working to understand the inner workings of plea bargaining. Furthermore, much sentencing research focuses on guideline jurisdictions and many readily-available datasets do not include information on evidence or arrest circumstances, which are likely important for prosecutorial decisions. This dissertation starts to fill these gaps with a multi-method study using newly collected set of drug cases from a large, urban county in a state (Texas) with an indeterminate sentencing structure. Cocaine is particularly salient given its role in the War on Drugs and little is known about how drug cases are currently processed in state criminal courts. Practitioners in this jurisdiction depict a casual bargaining process that occurs in the vast majority of cases. Plea bargaining is described as a haggling process much like car buying and each defense attorney has their own personal negotiation strategy. Descriptions of “typical” cocaine defendants vary, but most participants believe that evidence and criminal history are the most important factors for bargaining. Interviews further reveal that popular operationalization of “criminal history” may be lacking, there are several layers of control over assistant district attorneys, and practitioners favor the indeterminate sentencing structure currently in place. With regards to evidence, cash seized at arrest, a search being performed, and selling to the police are particularly relevant. Further, larger substance quantity predicts a more serious distribution charge but does not impact charge reductions. For sentence length, drug quantity’s main role seems to be to place offenders into statutory categories; once in these categories, quantity is less impactful. Few extralegal covariates are predictive of charge type decisions, charge reductions, or sentence length, though descriptive statistics show minority defendants to be overwhelming majority of this sample. This project highlights a need for further detailed data collection and replication in additional jurisdictions, the value of qualitative research, and a need to better understand the role of defendants and their attorneys in court outcomes. A number of policy implications can also be gleaned from these results, including a potential inspection of quantity ranges in controlled substance laws and negotiation training for defense attorneys.
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    Refocusing on Gender: Can Focal Concerns Theory Explain Gender Disparities in Sentencing Outcomes?
    (2015) Richardson, Rebecca; Johnson, Brian D; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Focal concerns theory argues that sentencing decisions reflect judges' beliefs about three primary considerations: blameworthiness of the defendant, protection of the community, and practical concerns. This perspective has been used as the theoretical foundation in an abundance of research and has proven particularly useful as a framework for explaining sentencing disparities related to offenders' demographic characteristics. Little work, however, has been able to incorporate perceptual measures of the three focal concerns into studies of sentencing outcomes and social inequality. This study uses a dataset that combines official county court records with case-level judicial surveys to conduct a more direct test of the focal concerns theory of judicial decision-making. It measures judicial assessments of each focal concern for each court case and then evaluates the extent to which these assessments explain gender disparities in two sentencing decisions: the decision to incarcerate, and the determination of sentence length.
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    A Tale of Two Crimes: An Analysis of Criminal Sentencing of White-Collar and Street Offenders
    (2015) Testa, Alexander; Simpson, Sally; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Though a long-standing history of scholarship has sought to understand the potential for disparities in criminal punishment based on ascribed status characteristics, contemporary research has largely ignored the ways in which punishment outcomes varies across offenders convicted of offenses traditionally viewed as either white-collar or street crimes. Using data from United States federal district courts from fiscal years 2008-2010, this research expands upon current knowledge by comparing embezzlement and larceny offenders in federal criminal courts across a variety of punishment processes and outcomes. The findings suggest a substantial degree of variation in punishment severity between embezzlement and larceny offenders across modes of punishment. Generally, the question of whether white-collar offenders are treated severely, leniently, or about the same as compared to non-violent property offenders is largely dependent upon the outcome of interest and the specific types of offenses included in the analysis.
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    The Determinants of Court-Martial Decisions: An Empirical Investigation into the Air Force's Criminal Court Process
    (2015) Breen, Patricia D.; Johnson, Brian D; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In spite of many similarities with civilian criminal courts, public debate continues about further "civilianizing" the modern court-martial process to enhance legitimacy and reduce unwarranted disparities. Unfortunately, researchers and policymakers know very little about the determinants of court-martial decisions and the influence of military culture in the process. The current study begins to address this void in the empirical literature and informs contemporary reform discussions with its examination of the legal and extra-legal factors for court-martial decision outcomes at different stages of the process. With an extension of modern courts and sentencing theoretical perspectives, this study utilized multi-level modeling techniques with Air Force court-martial data from 2005-2008 to investigate the effects of individual-level factors as well as inter-court community and inter-judge disparities. The results revealed a number of findings that were contrary to civilian court research and theoretical expectations particularly for military-specific outcomes. Additionally, the analysis detected some evidence of disparities consistent with the influence of traditional military culture for decisions earlier in the court-martial process. The implications for the current public policy debate, courts and sentencing theoretical development, and future research are discussed.
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    A Longitudinal Study of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines: A Decade of Balancing Judicial Discretion and Unwarranted Disparity (1993-2003)
    (2007-04-27) Sharp, Barbara Ann; Wellford, Charles; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This research focuses on judicial decision-making in the federal courts to determine whether unwarranted disparities persist, and also to gauge the change, if any, that occurs over time. Three sentencing outcomes were analyzed: the in/out incarceration decision, the length of term of incarceration decision, and the judicial downward departure decision. Eleven consecutive fiscal years of data from all 94 federal district courts were used to assess the effects of a defendant's gender, race and ethnicity, mode of conviction, offense type, district court location, and year of sentencing on the sentencing outcome. The results of the study were presented along two dimensions, namely as overall aggregate findings concerning the effects of these factors, and secondly, as findings concerning the effects of these factors on each individual fiscal year to measure the changes in the influence of these factors over time. The aggregate findings show that female defendants are treated more leniently while black and Hispanic defendants were hampered in all three sentencing outcomes--Hispanics more so for the incarceration decision, and blacks more so for the length-of-term and the judicial downward departure decision. The mode of conviction was found to be highly significant, penalizing those defendants who were convicted at trial. The influence of the offense type categories, the fiscal year of sentencing, and many of the district court variables were also significant. The findings from the temporal analysis indicate that gender became less significant over time in the incarceration decision as the probability of going to prison increased for all defendants. The probability of Black and Hispanic defendants being incarcerated and of their length-of-term changed over time, but their likelihoods for receiving downward departures did not. The only change noted for the mode of conviction was for judicial downward departures, but the change was an even greater decrease in the likelihood of receiving this type of departure. Additional findings suggest that defendants sentenced for immigration offenses are treated differently at sentencing, and that differences in these three sentencing outcomes vary by district court and by the fiscal year in which the sentencing occurred.