The impact of race on the adjudication of sexual assault and other violent crimes

Maxwell, Christopher D.; Robinson, Amanda L.; Post, Lori A.

doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2003.08.005

Cited by 31 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Spohn and Cederblom's (1991) examination of sentencing for violent crimes found that race influenced the incarceration decision for assault but not for more serious violent crimes such as rape, robbery, and murder. Using 1990 data from the State Courts Processing Statistics Program, Maxwell et al (2003) found that there were no significant differences between Blacks and Whites in the decision to incarcerate for assault and sexual assault. Interestingly, they also report that Blacks were less likely than Whites to go to prison for murder.…”

Section: Race Ethnicity Age and Sex: Incarceration Penalty Across mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Imprisonment Penalty for Young Black and Hispanic Males

Warren

Chiricos

Bales

2011

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

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In the United States, there are well-known racial, ethnic, age, and sex differences in incarceration rates. Younger offenders are more likely to be sentenced to prison than are older offenders. Black and Hispanic rates of incarceration are six to eight times that of White offenders and males are 14 times as likely as women to be sentenced to prison. This research explores how the combined effects of race, ethnicity, age, and sex, net of legally relevant factors, influence the decision to incarcerate. We examine these effects across nine offense categories. The analysis is based on Florida felony conviction data for the years 2000 to 2006. We find that legally relevant factors significantly influence the incarceration decision. Young Black males are most disadvantaged at the incarceration decision.

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Section: Race Ethnicity Age and Sex: Incarceration Penalty Across mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Imprisonment Penalty for Young Black and Hispanic Males

Warren

Chiricos

Bales

2011

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

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“…As used in criminological literature, the notion of racial privilege draws attention to the salience of characteristics of crime victims in how seriously victimization is treated and in the outcomes of justice processing (Bachman 1996; Baumer, Messner, and Rosenfeld 2000; Bontrager et al 2005; Hawkins 1986; Kleck 1981; Maxwell, Robinson, and Post 2003; Williams, Demuth and Holcomb 2007). Such arguments assert that the justice system operates in a manner that takes more seriously crimes involving White victims than those affecting other groups, especially if Whites' victimization is at the hands of non-Whites.…”

Section: Explaining Patterns Of Race-ethnic Group Representations As mentioning

confidence: 99%

Race and Ethnic Representations of Lawbreakers and Victims in Crime News: A National Study of Television Coverage

Bjornstrom

Kaufman²,

Peterson³

et al. 2010

Social Problems

149

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Research on racial-ethnic portrayals in television crime news is limited and questions remain about the sources of representations and how these vary for perpetrators versus victims. We draw from power structure, market share, normal crimes, racial threat, and racial privileging perspectives to further this research. The reported race or ethnicity of violent crime perpetrators and victims are modeled as functions of: (1) situational characteristics of crime stories; and (2) contextual characteristics of television market areas. The primary data are from a stratified random sample of television newscasts in (Long et al. 2005). An important innovation of our work is the use of a national, more generalizeable, sample of local news stories than prior researchers who tended to focus on single market areas. Results indicate that both the context of the story itself and the social structural context within which news stories are reported are relevant to ethnic and racial portrayals in crime news. We find limited support for power structure, market share, normal crimes and racial threat explanations of patterns of reporting. Racial privileging arguments receive more extensive support. Keywords media; crime news; race and ethnicity; context; television Media representations of crime shape public opinion in important ways, including through the frequency with which, and how they present criminal participants and victims. For example, views of the nature of the crime problem and who, or what, is responsible for said problem in a locale may be shaped by the extent to which specific groups are over-or underrepresented as perpetrators or victims in crime news relative to other groups or their share of criminal involvement or victimization. On the one hand, if media sources overrepresent NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript certain groups (e.g., males, people of color, etc.) as perpetrators, this may promote racial or gender stereotypes or reinforce public hostility toward such groups (e.g., Barlow, Barlow, and Chiricos 1990;Dixon, Azocar and Casas 2003; Linz 2000a, 2000b;Russell 1998). On the other hand, overrepresentation of the victimization of certain groups (e.g., females, Whites, etc.) may promote misleading views of what populations are the most vulnerable to crime, or who should fear crime. If media sources shape public opinion in these ways and such opinion has its counterpart in the development of criminal justice policies, differential treatment may be the result (e.g., harsher penalties for crimes that are more typically committed by certain perpetrators; greater attention to reducing the victimization of members of certain groups who may be erroneously perceived as being at greater risk for victimization) (Bobo and Johnson 2004;Russell 1998).In light of their potential influence, researchers have sought to assess empirically the nature and outcomes of media representations of crime. Further, because of the assumed differential group impact of such rep...

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“…With varying conditions relating to the seriousness of the crime circumstance, race was most often not a significant predictor. Maxwell, Robinson and Post (2003) used 1990s data from the State Courts Processing Statistics Program, which involve the seventy-five most populous counties, to assess the effects of race and Hispanic ethnicity on sentencing for four violent crimes. 5 Blacks and Hispanics received significantly longer sentences than whites for murder, assault and robbery, but shorter sentences for sexual assault.…”

Section: Type Of Crimementioning

confidence: 99%

Race, Ethnicity, Threat and the Labeling of Convicted Felons*

2005

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Florida law allows judges to withhold adjudication of guilt for persons who have either pled guilty or been found guilty of a felony. This provision may apply only to persons who will be sentenced to probation, and it allows such individuals to retain all civil rights and to truthfully assert they had not been convicted of a felony. This paper examines the effects of race and Hispanic ethnicity on the withholding of adjudication for 91,477 males sentenced to probation in Florida between 1999 and 2002. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling is used to assess the direct effects of defendant attributes as well as the cross-level interactions between race, ethnicity and community level indicators of threat, such as percentage black and Hispanic and concentrated disadvantage. Our results show that Hispanics and blacks are significantly less likely to have adjudication withheld when other individual and community level factors are controlled. This effect is especially pronounced for blacks and for drug offenders. Cross-level interactions show that concentrated disadvantage has a substantial effect on the adjudication withheld outcome for both black and Hispanic defendants. The implications of these results for the conceptualization of racial/ethnic threat at the individual, situational and social levels are discussed. *The authors are grateful to Gary Kleck and anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Mike Reisig for helpful suggestions at several stages in its development.

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The impact of race on the adjudication of sexual assault and other violent crimes

Cited by 31 publications

References 44 publications

The Imprisonment Penalty for Young Black and Hispanic Males

The Imprisonment Penalty for Young Black and Hispanic Males

Race and Ethnic Representations of Lawbreakers and Victims in Crime News: A National Study of Television Coverage

Race, Ethnicity, Threat and the Labeling of Convicted Felons*

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