Decades of research on the administration of the death penalty have recognized the persistent arbitrariness in its implementation and the racial inequality in the selection of defendants and cases for capital punishment. This Article provides new insights into the combined effects of these two constitutional challenges. We show how these features of post-Furman capital punishment operate at each stage of adjudication, from charging death-eligible cases to plea negotiations to the selection of eligible cases for execution and ultimately to the execution itself, and how their effects combine to sustain the constitutional violations first identified 50 years ago in Furman. Analyzing a dataset of 2,328 first-degree murder convictions in Georgia from 1995-2004 that produced 1,317 death eligible cases, we show that two features of these cases combine to produce a small group of persons facing execution: victim race and gender, and a set of case-specific features that are often correlated with race. We also show that these features explain which cases progress from the initial stages of charging to a death sentence, and which are removed from death eligibility at each stage through plea negotiations. Consistent with decades of death penalty research, we also show the special focus of prosecution on cases where Black defendants murder white victims. The evidence in the Georgia records suggests a regime marred less by overbreadth in its statute than capriciousness and randomness in the decision to seek death and to seek it in a racially disparate manner. These two dimensions of capital case adjudication combine to sustain the twin failures that produce the fatal lottery that is the death penalty.

Discrimination may appear in backstage events, with "suppressed facts making an appearance." Labeling theorists entertain a similar expectation concerning the discriminatory application of the criminal sanction to racial minorities. The relationship between "extra-legal" attributes and criminal justice system processing has occupied the attention of legal scholars and sociologists for over twenty years. In terms of negotiation and bargaining over the application of criminal labels, racial minorities, because of a lack of resources are more likely to find themselves in a disadvantageous position, and so receive more severe treatment. If there is racial bias in the criminal justice system, then it is more likely to appear in less visible ceremonies. The chapter explores criminal justice decision making in a backstage region. It draws on how one American minority group, the Native American, fares in the decision to grant parole.

Abstract According to deterrence theory in criminology, we are affected by both the costs and rewards that are consequent to our behavior. In other words, we tend to behave based on the expectation that we will receive some type of reward for doing it while hoping to avoid some type of punishment for not doing it or doing something else. We also provide disincentives, such as the criminal justice system, in order to discourage crime. The criminal justice system can reduce crime by apprehending and punishing offenders based on two mechanisms: specific deterrence and general deterrence. Deterrence theory posits that the actual practices of the criminal justice system, or what is known as the objective properties of punishment, affect would-be offenders' decisions by way of the perceptual properties of punishment. The idea behind perceptual deterrence theory is that the perceived certainty, severity, and celerity of punishment are inversely related to the decisions by would-be offenders to commit crime.

The basic thesis of the Mark Colvin/John Pauly theory is that serious patterned delinquency is the ultimate product of the social relations engendered by particular positions within advanced capitalist production. The Colvin/Pauly model states that parental control methods influence the quality of the bond between parent and child. This chapter offers a logical and empirical critique of the Colvin/Pauly theory. It contends that it is almost certainly incorrect in its basic assumptions and its consequent predictions, and that it incorporates a number of logical and practical difficulties that make it scientifically untenable. The chapter discusses that theoretical integration movement is useful—indeed, essential—for scientific development in field of criminology. It also discusses that efforts to build synthetic theory will profit from careful attention to the problems that Colvin and Pauly encountered. The chapter explores the employer records to determine what happened in the past when an employee of the type in question began to do poorly on the job.

Minority groups are significantly overrepresented in crime. Theories of racial differences in crime developed using two separate and distinct approaches that highlight either increased exposure to criminogenic factors at the individual level or greater risk of crime due to disadvantaged neighborhood conditions. Neighborhood theories describe how structural disadvantage disrupts neighborhood social processes and produces oppositional street cultures. In the article, we advance theorizing on race and crime by linking the neighborhood experience to individual-level decision making via new conceptualizations of culture. Rather than a values as goals view of culture, culture may include a tool kit of ways to solve problems and this cultural toolkit may, in turn, influence how an individual makes decisions. Specifically, culturally learned toolkits may increase flaws in the decision process (e.g., fast and intuitive rather than deliberate decision processes, the use of decision heuristics) to produce more crime, which would explain the association between race and crime. We integrate this conceptualization of culture and these flaws in the decision-making process into rational choice theory at the individual level and describe how they may be exacerbated in disadvantaged neighborhood contexts. Implications for understanding race and crime and directions for future research are discussed.

This chapter examines a traditional deterrence framework as it applies to corporate offenders. It sets out the assumptions of the model, evaluate the empirical evidence, and weigh the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. The chapter explores formal deterrence by drawing on the rational choice perspective. Supplementing the formal and informal costs of punishment in our rational choice model of corporate crime are considerations of moral belief and the perceived legitimacy of the law. Moral beliefs refer to the extent to which persons perceive a particular criminal act to be morally offensive. Important contextual dimensions of the criminal event would be deliberately manipulated in these scenarios, and would provide a specific referent for queries regarding the certainty and severity of sanctions. With these scenarios, researchers would be able to examine the instantaneous relationship between key theoretical variables and self-reported intentions to commit a corporate offense.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to measure the effect that age has on women’s gendered prisoner reentry experiences and the likelihood of desisting from crime and substance abuse. This study also seeks to evaluate the applicability of Paternoster and Bushway’s (2009) Identity Theory of Desistance (ITD) for a contemporary, all-female sample. Methods This mixed-method study makes use of official arrest data for 218 women leaving Delaware prisons in the mid 1990s, to create group-based offending trajectory models. A representative subsample of 118 women was interviewed between 2009 and 2011 and asked to conceptualize the mechanisms that led to their desistance or persistence in offending. Results Multinomial logistic regression analyses reveal that for some of the sample, age at the time of release from prison has a positive effect on the likelihood that women will belong to a desisting trajectory group rather than the most deviant reference group. Interview narratives demonstrate that in navigating the post-incarceration gendered experiences of securing employment, family reunification, and substance abuse recovery, maturity, clarity about one’s personal responsibility for linked failures, and a desire to transform one’s identity were significant factors that preceded the capacity to excel in those reentry domains. Conclusions These findings lend support for the applicability of ITD for women’s desistance experiences. As older women appear to express a reentry goal orientation that diverges from that of their younger counterparts, gender-responsive rehabilitation agendas must also include programming that increases the likelihood that participants will connect failures sooner so that the prosocial benefits of a healthy identity change can be enjoyed for longer.

The use of performance-enhancing drugs is a significant problem in sport. It cheats clean athletes of their hard-earned rewards from perfecting their skills though dedication and hard work. It defrauds fans by substituting a distorted playing field for a true competition. Anti-doping agencies have been charged with enforcing drug policies, primarily through the use of drug testing programs. We propose that drug testing, while important, is not sufficient to achieve deterrence. Engaging the principles of perceptual deterrence and development of a moral community of athletes can greatly enhance compliance with rules.

In an effort to build on previous theory and research it is argued that self-control is not synonymous with impulsivity, but rather should be conceptualized as self-regulation: the capacity to override impulsive desires. Using a sample of college students and a sample of serious adult criminal offenders, we test four hypotheses regarding the relationship between self-regulation, impulsivity, and several outcome measures reflecting antisocial or criminal behavior. Our findings within the college sample more strongly support the notion of self-control as self-regulation. The result differences between samples also highlight the need to consider limitations when generalizing results from more conventional student groups.

Using a mixed-race sample of male and female drug-involved offenders who were released from prison in the early 1990s and re-interviewed in 2009 through 2011, this article represents perhaps the first attempt to determine the utility of the identity theory of desistance (ITD) in explaining desistance in a contemporary cohort of adult drug-involved offenders. Supporting the ITD, interview narratives revealed that the vast majority of offenders who successfully desisted from crime and substance misuse had first transformed their offender identity into a non-offender identity. Although partnership and employment did not appear to be significant turning points per se for the majority of our respondents, rekindling relationships with extended family and finding living-wage employment did serve to solidify new prosocial identities once the transformation had occurred.

Theories of desistance from crime have emphasized social processes like involvement in adult social bonds or prosocial social relationships to the deliberate neglect of individual subjective processes such as one's identity. More recent theories, however, have stressed the role of identity and human agency in the desistance process. An important set of questions is whether identity theory adds anything to existing theories, and whether there is empirical evidence to suggest that such subjective processes are important. In this article, we provide an empirical assessment of individual subjective considerations in desistance by looking at the relationship between good identities, intentional self-change, and desistance using survival time data from a sample of serious drug-troubled adult offenders released from prison whose arrest records are followed for almost a 20-year period. The implications of our findings for all brands of criminal desistance theory are discussed.

This paper aims to suggest a framework to think of a more practical way to consider the broader impact of a program intervention beyond just its average, by considering the concept of treatment effect heterogeneity—how the same intervention may produce differential effects for different subgroups of individuals.

Using a sample of 118 drug-involved women originally released from prison in the 1990s and re-interviewed between 2010 and 2011, this paper examines the role motherhood played in the desistance process from crime and substance abuse. Interview narratives revealed that motherhood rarely functioned as a turning point per se that activated desistance, but caring for children did serve to solidify prosocial identities once offenders had transformed their addict/criminal identities. Despite their identity transformations, however, the journey of desistance for the majority of mothers was still a long and arduous path. The reality for these mothers most often resembled a hostile terrain marked by the competing demands of battling addiction, finding employment and suitable housing with a criminal record, establishing visitation and custody rights in family court, and regaining the trust of children and family members who had long ago lost faith in their commitment to their families. This research illuminates the complexities inherent in the desistance process for a contemporary sample of drug involved adult women entrenched within the criminal justice system.

Our goal is to document the general issues that arise in estimating and comparing local crime rates over time and for different cities. Data are drawn from police-based residential burglary counts and the National Crime Victimization Survey to obtain interval estimates of residential burglary incidence at the local level. Ambiguity exists when making point estimates of crime that are based entirely on Uniform Crime Reports data. Sources of this ambiguity include (a) the “Hierarchy Rule,” (b) population estimates used in estimating the burglary rate, and (c) variation in the probability that a residential burglary victim reports the incident to the police. Analyses document uncertainty of burglary rates when comparing across cities and over time. We think it will be useful to begin reporting crime patterns in terms of a range of uncertainty that expresses both what is known and unknown about the numbers that are used to measure those patterns.

Using a mixed-race sample of male and female drug-involved offenders who were released from prison in the early 1990s and re-interviewed in 2009 through 2011, this article represents perhaps the first attempt to determine the utility of the identity theory of desistance (ITD) in explaining desistance in a contemporary cohort of adult drug-involved offenders. Supporting the ITD, interview narratives revealed that the vast majority of offenders who successfully desisted from crime and substance misuse had first transformed their offender identity into a non-offender identity. Although partnership and employment did not appear to be significant turning points per se for the majority of our respondents, rekindling relationships with extended family and finding living-wage employment did serve to solidify new prosocial identities once the transformation had occurred.