Numerous studies have examined political influences on communities' allocations of fiscal and personnel resources to policing. Rational choice theory maintains that these resources are distributed in accordance with the need for crime control, whereas conflict theory argues that they are allocated with the aim of controlling racial and ethnic minorities. Existing research more consistently supports the conflict argument, but important issues remain unaddressed. The authors tested that approach by examining allocations of police resources in large cities in the Southwest, the yet-to-be-studied region in which the majority of Hispanics reside. The analyses included the key variables from the rational choice and conflict perspectives, as well as proximity to the border between the United States and Mexico. Minimal effects existed for percent Hispanic, an important conflict theory variable. However, Anglo-Hispanic income inequality and proximity to the border had effects consistent with that perspective. Class divisions within the Hispanic community may explain this pattern of findings.

One rationale used in the imposition of capital punishment is the potential future dangerousness of the most serious offenders. Most research in this area has focused on the postcommutation and postrelease behavior of formerly condemned offenders and found that the majority of them did not pose significant danger risks. The current study examined the prison infraction records of 1,005 Arizona inmates serving determinate, life, or death sentences. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression models indicated that inmates sentenced to death were more dangerous than noncondemned inmates were. This effect achieved modest statistical significance and withstood controls for demographic characteristics, offense severity and type, criminal history, and diagnostic measures. Overall, these findings suggest that condemned defendants may be more dangerous than others, a statement sharply discordant with the extant literature regarding the future dangerousness of capital defendants. Additional research employing different samples from different regions of the United States is needed.

Criminal sentencing research has traditionally focused on felony sentencing disparities between Whites and Blacks, and more recently, between Whites and Latinos. This study examines over 8,000 misdemeanor cases registered in 1992 from three Nebraska non-metropolitan counties to further determine the nature and scope of racial=ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system. In comparison to Whites and Latinos, Native Americans have significantly higher proportions of individuals charged with more serious misdemeanor offenses, and are charged with a significantly higher mean total number of offenses. Even though legal variables accounted for a great deal of the variance in multivariate OLS and logistic sentencing models, Native Americans received significantly harsher punishment for the conviction of misdemeanor crimes when compared to Whites and Latinos. Results clearly indicate the need for more criminal sentencing research that better takes into account the social context of law enforcement and sentencing. In particular, researchers need to critically address if and how racial=ethnic bias in the enforcement and punishment of misdemeanor codes affects other aspects of criminal adjudication -i.e., felony convictions.A major shortcoming in criminal sentencing research is the reliance on felony sentencing data to explain racial=ethnic inequities in the dispensation of criminal justice. This trend precludes an examination of how prior criminal justice decisions affect felony adjudication. For instance, some researchers contend that much of the racial=ethnic disparity in felony criminal sentencing dispositions is accounted for by legal variables such as prior record and seriousness of the offense (Dixon, 1995;Wilbanks, 1987;Kleck, 1985;Hagan, 1974). Others contend that racial=ethnic disparities in criminal sentencing favoring Whites over non-Whites are visible even when controlling for legal variables (Blumstein et al., 1983). This is particularly the case in the decision to incarcerate rather than in sentence length, and for certain social settings and particular crimes (Muñoz, 2000;Spohn and DeLone, 2000;Chiricos and Crawford, 1995;Hagan and Bumiller, 1983). What investigators have neglected to deliberate more closely is the possible cumulative disadvantage effect (Zatz, 1987) of racial=ethnic bias in criminal justice decision-making that could be masked within a legal variable such as prior record. To illustrate, evidence suggests that non-Whites'