Meghan Sacks

Legislation Targeting Sex Offenders: Are Recent Policies Effective in Reducing Rape?

In recent years, several pieces of state and federal legislation have imposed new restrictions on convicted sex offenders, including registration with law enforcement agencies, community notification provisions, and sexually violent predator designations permitting civil commitment following a prison sentence. This paper uses panel data for the American states for the years 1970–2002 to assess the impact of these policies on the rate at which rapes occur. Our research finds no evidence that our current policies reduce the incidence of rape.

Bail and Sentencing Does Pretrial Detention Lead to Harsher Punishment

Previous research on judicial decision making has shown that legal factors, such as offense severity and prior criminal record, exert a strong impact on sentencing decisions. In addition, studies have demonstrated that demographic factors, such as race and gender, also influence sentencing decisions. This study utilized a sample of (n = 975) cases collected by New Jersey’s Criminal Disposition Commission, tracked from arrest through disposition, to assess the factors that influence sentencing decisions, with a specific focus on the role of pretrial release status. The authors found that pretrial detention does not influence the decision to incarcerate; however, pretrial detention does significantly and negatively affects the length of the sentence in cases that involve a sentence of incarceration.

The Experiences of Registered Sex Offenders With Internet Offender Registries in Three States

For over two decades, U.S. state and federal governments have enacted broad legislation in an effort to keep communities aware about and safe from sex offenders living nearby. The current study qualitatively analyzes unsolicited responses from sex offenders regarding their feelings, attitudes, and experiences living under the auspices of such legislation. A total of 60 survey responses from offenders in three states were reviewed. Several key themes emerged, including legal issues, hopelessness and despair, collateral consequences, and lack of effectiveness of registration and notification. Policy and research implications are discussed.

The Criminal Justice System Creates Incentives for False Convictions

Abstract The American criminal justice system creates incentives for false conviction. For example, many public crime labs are funded in part per conviction. We show that the number of false convictions per year in the American criminal justice system should be considered “high.” We examine the incentives of police, forensic scientists, prosecutors, and public defenders in the U.S. Police, prosecutors, and forensic scientists often have an incentive to garner convictions with little incentive to convict the right person. These incentives create what economists call a “multitask problem” that seems to be resulting in a needlessly high rate of false convictions. Public defenders lack the resources and incentives needed to provide a vigorous defense for their clients. Corrective measures are discussed, along with a call for more research.

Pretrial detention and guilty pleas: if they cannot afford bail they must be guilty

Many researchers have examined the factors that affect guilty pleas, but have typically utilized a dichotomous dependent variable, measuring either a guilty plea or trial. However, the majority of cases are resolved though a guilty plea, making the inevitable question one of timing. The current study investigates the factors that affect disposition timing and, in particular, considers the impact of pretrial detention on guilty pleas. Using a sample of (n = 975) cases from New Jerseys Criminal Disposition Commission, tracked from inception through disposition, to assess the factors that influence the timing of guilty pleas, our research finds that defendants held in pretrial detention will plead guilty faster than those defendants released into the community prior to trial

Does law matter? An old bail law confronts the New Penology:

The New Penology paradigm stipulates that governments increasingly incarcerate ‘unruly classes’ in order to manage rather than punish these groups. Even more than in previous decades, post-industrial society is said to utilize the criminal sanction as a means of repressing the poor, urban, unemployed, and members of minority groups. Drawing on the New Penology framework, the current research uses the example of bail to assess whether risk management rationales have migrated into judges’ decision making despite a law that favors non-incarceration. Using a sample of 975 felony cases, this study investigates factors that impact bail decisions and outcomes in New Jersey, a state that does not permit preventive detention and in which the Constitution favors release on bail. Our findings suggest that the New Penology is generally not prevalent in New Jersey bail practice. Specifically, results suggest that judges do not seek to preventively detain the ‘urban underclass’ and that criminal history (traditionally used as a proxy for dangerousness) does not consistently emerge as a predictor of bail decisions. Race remains one of the strongest predictors of bail decisions, which is consistent with but certainly not limited to principles of the New Penology. These results call into question the inevitability of postmodern development and raise the issue of whether law can delay it.

Rape Myths in the Media: A Content Analysis of Local Newspaper Reporting in the United States

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that rape myths are often found in the media reporting of sexual assault. These studies have utilized national newspapers, magazines and television coverage of sexual assault in their examination of sexual assault, very often using celebrity cases as a focal point of the research. In the current study, a content analysis, we utilized one local newspaper from each of the nine geographical regions designated by the Census Bureau to examine how local media report on sexual assault. We included articles from a one-year time period from January 2011 to January 2012, culminating in a total sample of 386 articles. We examined descriptive statistics and conducted a series of chi-square analyses. Initially, we found very little evidence of direct rape myth reporting by local newspapers, though a further analysis revealed that local media’s reporting on sexual assault might indirectly reinforce some of the commonly known rape myths.

How to Succeed in Criminal Justice Without Really Trying

We examined the incentive structure of the various actors of the criminal justice system within an organization economics framework. Specifically, we examined the incentives of the police, forensic scientists, prosecutors and public defenders. We found that police, prosecutors and forensic scientists often have an incentive to garner convictions with little incentive to convict the right person, whereas public defenders lack incentives to provide a vigorous defense for their clients. Further, we analyzed the role this skewed incentive structure plays in leading to false convictions.