Marjorie S. Zatz

The Changing Forms of Racial/Ethnic Biases in Sentencing:

Racial/ethnic discrimination in criminal justice processing has been the subject of heated debate for several decades. This article traces findings from four historical waves of research on sentencing disparities. Particular attention is given to changes in research methodologies and data sources, the social contexts within which research has been conducted, and the various forms that bias can manifest. It explores the change from findings of overt racial/ethnic disparities to more subtle, but still systematic, institutionalized biases. In so doing, the movement toward determinate sentencing is discussed, and the biases identified are partially explained by the need for the system to maintain legitimacy in the face of social change.

Chicano youth gangs and crime: the creation of a moral panic

The relationship between Chicano gangs, crime, the police, and the Chicano community is complex. Neither the ‘problem’ of youth gangs nor the specialized police units created to cope with this problem arises in a social vacuum. Rather, both emerge from a particular historical structuring of social, economic, and political relations. This paper investigates how and why a ‘moral panic’ arose concerning Chicano youth gangs in Phoenix in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A variety of qualitative and quantitative data from media reports, interviews, and juvenile court records are used to assess whether it was the actual behavior of Chicano youths or the social imagery surrounding them that formed the basis for the ‘gang problem’ in Phoenix. I suggest that the image of gangs, and especially of Chicano gangs, as violent converged with that of Mexicans and Chicanos as ‘different’ to create the threat of disorder. In addition, it was in the interests of the police department to discover the ‘gang problem’ and build an even greater sense of threat so as to acquire federal funding of a specialized unit.

Los Cholos: Legal Processing of Chicano Gang Members

Recent work suggests that the label “gang member” is an important contingency in the legal processing of juveniles. An event-history analysis of 1,916 court referrals for 257 Chicano boys indicates that gang membership does not have an independent impact on their rate of movement through the juvenile court system to various outcomes. However, the effects of school performance, prior record, offense characteristics, and complaint type on rates of movement to case disposition operate differently for gang and nongang youths. Although gang members are not subjected to direct discrimination these findings indicate that the gang identity affects the interpretation and influence of other personal, offense, and case factors in court processing.

Crime, time, and punishment: An exploration of selection bias in sentencing research

The sentencing decision reflects the culmination of a long series of processing and, thus, selection decisions, with cases leaving the system at each decision point. Accordingly, the substantive implications of bias due to sample selection are of particular concern for sentencing research. In an effort to assess the existence and manifestations of selection bias, the sentencing decision is modeled for three samples, each of which was selected from different stages of the justice process. Event-history data on felony arrests in the State of California over a 3-year period are used, along with a relatively simple analytic technique which reduces such bias. Results indicate that biasis introduced when censored observations are excluded from the analyses. Also, the effects of certain exogenous variables on sentence length differ, depending upon the selection criteria. Of these, the influence of pleading guilty rather than going to trial is especially interesting. Overall, our findings are consistent with the possibility that selectivity bias has concealed effects of sentence bargaining in some earlier studies.

Pleas, priors, and prison: Racial/ethnic differences in sentencing

Final case disposition and sentencing decisions for whites, blacks, and Chicanos are modeled with event-history data from the State of California. Dynamic analyses are used to link processing models and theories. The three-way interaction of (1) pleading guilty × (2) racial/ethnic group membership × (3) the extent of prior court experience on rates of moving through the legal system is assessed, controlling for other legitimate and nonlegitimate influences. In a jurisdiction handling large numbers of defendants representing diverse racial/ethnic and cultural groups under determinate sentencing, the timing of legal processing is shown to be critical. Results demonstrate that pleading guilty increases the speed of processing most when sentences do not involve incarceration, though this effect is not found for second or later arrests of Chicanos. Generally, theories of resource mobilization receive greater support than cultural stereotyping.

Making Law the State, the Law, and Structural Contradictions

Preface: Marjorie S. Zatz Acknowledgments PART I. Structural Contradictions 1. On Lawmaking William J. Chambliss 2. The Creation of Criminal Law and Crime Control William J. Chambliss 3. The Political Economy of Opium and Heroin William J. Chambliss 4. The Contradictions of Corrections: An Inquiry into Nest Dilemmas Raymond J. Michalowski 5. Anti-Democratic Legislation in the Service of Democracy: Anti-Racism in Isreal Ephraim Tabory PART II. Ideology 6. Structural Contradictions and Ideological Consistency: Changes in the Form and Content of Cuban Criminal Law Marjorie S. Zatz and James H. McDonald 7. Worker Safety, Law, and Social Change: The Italian Case Kitty Calavita 8. Understanding the Emrgence of Law and Public Policy: Toward a Relational Model of the State Nancy A. Wonders and Frederic I. Solop PART III. Conflicts and Dilemmas 9. The Contradictions of Immigration Lawmaking: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Kitty Calavita 10. Toward a Class-Dialectical Model of Power: An Empirical Assessment of Three Competing Models of Political Power J. Allen Whitt 11. State-Organized Crime William J. Chambliss 12. State-Organized Homicide: A study of Seven CIP Plans to Assassinate Fidel Castro Mark S. Hamm PART IV. Strategies and Triggering Events 13. Social Structure, Crime, and Politics: A Conflict Model of the Criminal Law Formation Process Edmund F. Mcarrell and Thomas C. Catellano 14. Other PeopleOs Money Revisited: Collective Embezzlement in the Savings and Loan and Insurance Industries 15. Structural Contradictions and th production of New Legal Institutions: The Transformation of Industrial Accident Law Revisited Ryken Grattet PART V. Conclusions 16. Future Diretions Marjorie S. Zatz and William J. Chambliss Contributors Index

Cultural Capital, Gender, and the Structural Transformation of Legal Practice

In this article we clarify and modify Marxian and postindustrial predictions about the structural transformation of the legal profession, especially as they relate to gender differences in the law firm. In doing so, we utilize the concept of cultural capital and highlight the changing gender stratification of legal practice. We find that there is a growing centralization and concentration of cultural capital in law firms, so that both men and women are losing their proportionate shares of partnership positions in the profession, but with women losing more than men. The greatest growth in the profession has been at the middle and lower levels of larger firms, and women are especially likely to be represented in these locations. Women experience their worst partnership prospects in smaller firms, which suggests that male-dominated smaller firms are especially resistant to modifying the work roles assumed by men and women in the profession. We conclude that gender stratification is an important part of the structural transformation of legal practice.

Family and Residential Instability in the Context of Paternal and Maternal Incarceration

This study contributes to research on the effects of parental incarceration on youth, using quantitative and qualitative social file data among a sample of youth referred to an urban juvenile court. The authors expand on prior research by highlighting the role of the “unstable family” before and after parental incarceration, looking specifically at changes in guardianship status and residential instability. Maternal incarceration was significantly related to rearrest among youth, and residential instability that occurred following both maternal and paternal incarceration was significantly associated with rearrest. Results underscore the need for more nuanced research on the dynamic relation among family situational factors, paternal and maternal incarceration, and continued involvement of youth in the juvenile justice system.

Punishing Immigrants: Policy, Politics, and Injustice

Acknowledgments 1. Introduction Charis E. Kubrin, Marjorie S. Zatz, and Ramiro Martinez, Jr. 2. Panic, Risk, ControlMichael Welch 3. Growing Tensions between Civic Membership and Enforcement in the Devolution of Immigration Control Doris Marie Provine, Monica Varsanyi, Paul G. Lewis, and Scott H. Decker 4. No SurprisesKyrsten Sinema 5. Unearthing and Confronting the Social Skeletons of Immigration Status in Our Criminal Justice System Evelyn H. Cruz 6. The Ruptures of Return: Deportations Confounding Effects M. Kathleen Dingeman-Cerda and Susan Bibler Coutin 7. Race, Land, and Forced Migration in DarfurWenona Rymond-Richmond and John Hagan 8. Situating the Immigration and Neighborhood Crime Relationship across Multiple Cities Maria B. Velez and Christopher J. Lyons 9. Immigrant Inclusion and Prospects through Schooling in ItalyPaola Bertolini and Michele Lalla 10. Social Stressors, Special Vulnerabilities, and Violence Victimization among Latino Immigrant Day Laborers in Post-Katrina New Orleans Alice Cepeda, Nalini Negi, Kathryn Nowotny, James Arango, Charles Kaplan, and Avelardo Valdez 11. Conclusion Marjorie S. Zatz, Charis E. Kubrin, and Ramiro Martinez, Jr. About the Contributors Index

The social organization of criminal justice processing: An event history analysis

Crimes are social events that involve citizens and control agents interacting over time. Prior work neglects the dynamic and interactive qualities of these criminal events. Drawing from the work of Hawley and others, it is suggested that the processing of criminal events is a routine activity socially organized in time and space. Dynamic modeling techniques developed by N. Tuma are applied to longitudinal data collected on over 10,000 criminal events in California cities and used to model rates of transition from arrest to case disposition resulting from police release, prosecutor denial of complaint, or going to court. As the work of Hawley predicts, city size has much to do with the way criminal events are processed. For example, in larger cities it is demonstrated that crime specialists are processed more slowly than nonspecialists, and that each successive police processing of crime specialists results in slower rates of transition relative to nonspecialists; in smaller cities, it is demonstrated that black suspects are processed more quickly than whites, and that each successive police processing of black suspects results in faster rates of transition relative to whites. The former findings are explained in terms of rationalized intelligence gathering, the latter in terms of stereotyping and the harassment of minorities. The systematic form of the observed temporal changes, notwithstanding a large number of legal and extralegal variables taken into account, leads us to believe that we have identified important patterns of police activity. These and other findings convince us that the social organization of criminal justice processing deserves further study.