Martha A. Myers

Private and Public Trouble: Prosecutors and the Allocation of Court Resources

Private troubles are often made public through criminal prosecution. We argue that the decision to publicly prosecute a case involves a calculated allocation of court resources based on “strong case typification.” Support for this argument is found in a set of data made unique by their consideration of various types of evidence and the attributes of victims as well as defendants. Analysis focuses on a crucial point of entry into the criminal justice system, namely, the decision whether and how to criminally prosecute a case. In general, we find that cases involving serious crimes, strong evidence, credible witnesses, and presumably dangerous defendants are more likely to be fully and publicly prosecuted. And it is the troubles of older, white, male and employed victims that are considered worthy of public processing. Significantly, however, the influence of race becomes apparent only when the strength of evidence is held constant. The ironic reluctance of social scientists to consider the role of evidence in legal decision making is discussed.

Sexual Assault and Its Prosecution: A Comparison with Other Crimes

Sociologists have long been concerned with the origin, purpose, and application of the criminal law.1 Due in part to the feminist movement2 recent research has focused on the purpose and application of laws prohibiting sexual assault.3 This research signals an important shift in the focus and assumptions underlying criminological research. Implicitly, traditional research4 and theory5 have assumed that criminal events

Race, Labor, and Punishment in Postbellum Georgia

This paper examines the relationship between the political economy and the organization of punishment in the state of Georgia between 1868 and 1936. Punishment at this time was well-suited to an agricultural mode of production, characterized by chronic labor shortages. Punishment was decentralized, involved forced labor under harsh conditions, and reflected the existence of a labor market grounded in racist assumptions about the nature of black and white labor. Despite extended State control over convicts and expiration of the convict lease in 1909, punishment retained its decentralized and exploitative character. Nevertheless, the demand for convict labor shifted from the private to the public sector. This shift entailed significant changes in the type of labor performed by convicts, thereby broadening demand to encompass the labor of both white and black convicts. Time series analysis suggests that these race differences in labor demand and changes in demand over time found clear expression in the frequency with which blacks and whites were incarcerated.

Judges, juries, and the decision to convict

The bureaucratic context of criminal prosecution emphasizes efficiency; its legal context emphasizes due process and procedural fairness. This paper focuses on the trial stage of prosecution where both concerns are central. It empirically examines the bench trial, an alternative to the more commonly used plea of guilty and the more traditional trial by jury. A comparison between trial by judge and trial by jury reveals striking differences in determinations of guilt. These differences have implications for commonly held assumptions about both jury and judicial behavior.

Economic conditions and punishment in Postbellum Georgia

This paper examines the relationship between economic conditions and incarceration in Georgia between 1868 and 1936. Time-series analysis provides evidence that declining cotton prices increased the rate at which both black and white males were incarcerated. Changes in cotton production, declines in racial economic inequality, and demographic shifts also affected incarceration rates. Each had quite different implications for black and white punishment, however. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for research on punishment in general and Southern punishment in particular.

The Court and Sentencing

In this chapter, we explore the role court organization and personnel play during sentencing. Again, we are interested in two issues: whether bureaucratization and characteristics of the sentencing judge directly affect outcomes and whether they operate more subtly to condition the effect race and offense have on sentences. As we shall see, characteristics of the court and sentencing judge resemble county variables in several respects. They often have unanticipated, but very slight, effects on the three sentencing outcomes. Moreover, the weakness of these direct effects does not appear to be due to the imprecision introduced by aggregating judge information (see Appendix A). Instead, like county factors, court variables play a more indirect but nonetheless prominent role as conditioners of the effect race and offense have on sentencing. Some attributes of the sentencing judge, such as age, religion, and circuit of origin, are particularly influential conditioners, whereas others are less important (e.g., membership in community organizations). As a group, however, court variables affect differences in treatment for each of the three sentencing outcomes. Race differences in treatment are particularly noticeable, as are differences in the sentencing of common-law violent and burglary offenders.

Split sentencing in georgia: A test of two empirical assumptions

Recent research on felony sentencing in the nations trial courts has highlighted a type of sentence in which a prison term is coupled with a probation period. Under these so-called “split sentences,” convicted felons serve a term of incarceration, are released (possibly) on parole, and eventually come under the concurrent jurisdiction of both parole and probation authorities. Although such a sentence may serve a variety of purposes, it is at least conceivable that judges use the prison/probation combination as a way to respond to prison overcrowding and public pressure for punitiveness. This article reports a study of split sentencing in Georgia from 1976 to May 1985. Drawing on more general research on felony sentencing in the states Superior Courts, the authors test two empirical assumptions about split sentencing: (1) the perception that split sentencing has increased over time and (2) the importance of the total term (i.e., the prison/probation combination) over the actual severity (i.e., the time s...

The Community and Sentencing

In this chapter, we consider the effects that urbanization, economic conditions, and crime have on three sentencing decisions. As will become apparent, the direct influence these characteristics exert is neither strong nor consistent. Indeed, both the magnitude and direction of effects vary, depending on the sentencing decision in question. We also briefly consider an issue that has traditionally concerned criminologists, namely, the extent to which sentences vary as a function of offender attributes and behavior. Consistent with the previous literature, we find that judges give greater weight to factors that can explicitly be construed as legally relevant. Although social background attributes do affect outcomes, there is no evidence that offenders with fewer resources are consistently punished more severely. As was the case for county characteristics, the role case attributes play depends on the sentencing outcome under consideration.

The Context of Time

In the previous two chapters, we documented the ways in which the sentences imposed on convicted felons vary as a function of the county and the court where sentencing occurs. We also demonstrated that both the magnitude and direction of differential treatment are contingent on the court and surrounding community. In this chapter, we consider the context of time, and its implications for outcomes and for differential treatment during sentencing.

Criminal Punishment and Society

Criminal sentencing has always evoked considerable passion on the part of the judicial system and society. Judges frequently complain that it is one of their least favorite responsibilities, and the general public and many politicians think it exacerbates the problem of crime. Efforts to reform sentencing laws and practices have been introduced in virtually every state and the federal government (Shane-DuBow et al., 1985). As the National Academy of Sciences report emphasized, “the decade of the 1970’s was characterized by a variety of efforts to modify sentencing practices, to establish more detailed criteria for sentencing, and to establish new sentencing institutions and procedures” (Blumstein et al., 1983:1).