Political Culture and Felony Sentencing: An Examination of Trial Courts in 300 Counties

Abstract

Criminal sentencing is such a fundamental power of government that variations in its use can be linked to political culture. Using Daniel Elazar's typology of American political culture, three-hundred counties in 49 states were classified in terms of the prevailing political culture. This data was matched with sentencing data gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In the bivariate analysis traditionalistic political cultures administered harsher sentences; as for rates of incarceration, particularly in jails, moralistic political cultures incarcerated a higher percentage of individuals. In the multivariate model, many attributes closely related to political culture, such as conservatism, income distribution, and the overall crime rate, help to explain sentencing variations. However, political culture was significant only for larceny, and the results paralleled the bivariate analysis. This article concludes with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using political culture to study sentencing and the relevance of political culture to criminal justice policy.

Local Political Structures and Violent Crime in U.S. Cities

“…The question of the character of the impact of local government political structures on the criminal justice system in the Unitd States has been an enduring subject of research in many areas. Policy outcomes such as policing priorities regarding types of local crimes addressed (Langworthy, 1985; Wilson, 1968; Zhao & Hassell, 2005), police organizational structures adopted (Hassell, Zhao, & Maguire, 2003; Liederback & Travis, 2008), responses made to urban riots and public safety emergencies (Hahn, 1970; Welch, 1975), prosecution and sentencing outcomes (Bowers, 1997; Kritzer, 1979), and the investigation of serious crimes (Crank, 1992; Stucky, 2003) have all been studied to a limited degree with respect to the possible influence of local government political structures. Using a panel data set spanning a decade of time, our purpose was to examine the influence of a range of social, economic, and political structural factors on violent crime in 249 cities surveyed in 4 waves between 1993 and 2003.…”