College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item 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.Item The Pretrial Process in Baltimore City: An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Predicting Flight Risk(2010) Ferguson, Sharlene Anne; Paternoster, Ray; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines and provides a preliminary update to Baltimore City's Bail- Risk Assessment Scales. It is based on a sample of 757 recent arrestees in Baltimore City, and specifically examines factors relating to current charge severity, prior record, substance use, and community stability and their impact on Failure to Appear (FTA) in court in conjunction with guidelines set forth by the National Association of Pretrial Services Agency (NAPSA) and the American Bar Association (ABA). Results suggest that Baltimore City's Bail- Risk Assessments can be condensed into one scale and be made more simple and effective. Additionally, the results suggest that Baltimore City uses and applies reasonable risk factors, but the measures are inappropriate. Finally, the results suggest that future risk assessments must be tailored to the population for which they are applied.