Ronit Dinovitzer

Collateral Consequences of Imprisonment for Children, Communities, and Prisoners

Analyses of the effects of Americas experiment with vastly increased use of imprisonment as a penal sanction typically focus on crime reduction and public spending. Little attention has been paid to collateral effects. Imprisonment significantly reduces later employment rates and incomes of exprisoners. In many urban communities, large fractions of young men attain prison records and are thus made less able to contribute to their communities and families. Less is known about the effects of a parents imprisonment on childrens development, though mainstream theories provide grounds for predicting those effects are substantial and deleterious. Until research begins to shed light on these questions, penal policy will continue to be set in ignorance of important ramifications of alternate policy options.

Victim cooperation and the prosecution of domestic violence in a specialized court

We address the role of victim cooperation in the prosecution of domestic violence cases in a specialized court in Toronto, Canada. We first examine what factors predict whether a case will proceed to prosecution. We find that, even in a court designed to minimize reliance on victim cooperation through the use of other types of evidence, when prosecutors perceive a victim to be cooperative, the odds that a case will be prosecuted are seven times higher than if a victim is not perceived to be cooperative. In the second part of our analysis, where we seek to determine the correlates of victim cooperation, we find that the two most important determinants of victim cooperation are the availability of videotaped testimony and meetings between victims and victim/witness assistance workers. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research and policy.

The Differential Valuation of Women's Work: A New Look at the Gender Gap in Lawyers' Incomes

This article seeks to identify the mechanisms underlying the gender wage gap among new lawyers. Relying on nationally representative data to examine the salaries of lawyers working fulltime in private practice, we find a gender gap of about 5 percent. Identifying four mechanisms – work profiles, opportunity paths and structures, credentials, and legal markets – we first estimate how much of the gap stems from the differential valuation of womens endowments; second, we estimate the effects of different endowments for men and women; and third we assess both these possibilities. The analyses indicate that none of these mechanisms can fully account for the gender gap. Experimental studies that indicate womens work is less valued and rewarded than mens suggest new directions for research on gendered compensation.

Immigration and Youthful Illegalities in a Global Edge City

This research focuses on immigration and youthful illegalities in the Toronto area, one of the world’s most ethnically diverse global cities. While current research documents a negative relationship between crime and immigration, there is little attention to individual-level mechanisms that explain the paths through which immigrant youth refrain from illegalities. Through a study of two cohorts of adolescents across two generations (1976, 1999), we elaborate a process model that is generic over both generations, and in which measures of bonds to parents and schools, commitments to education, and dispositions of risk aversity mediate youth involvement in illegalities. By focusing on a period when non-European immigration to Toronto increased dramatically, we then identify a compositional effect through which the more recent cohort is engaged in fewer illegalities.

The Myth of Rapists and Other Normal Men: The Impact of Psychiatric Considerations on the Sentencing of Sexual Assault Offenders.

Canadian sentencing commissions have recommended that mental illness be considered as a mitigating factor in sentencing. With respect to sexual assault, some feminist literature asserts that over-reliance on psychiatric factors not only absolves the offender, but also serves to reinforce the myth that “normal” men do not rape women and children. In this study, data were collected on 97 Canada-wide sexual assault sentencing decisions from 15 August 1992 through 15 August 1993. This research does not find support for the hypothesis that sexual offenders are typically characterized as suffering from a mental disorder. Furthermore, using multiple regression, an interaction between judicial perception of the severity of the crime and judicial mention of psychiatric factors is found. The data show that psychiatric factors interact with perceptions of force, actually leading to harsher sentences. The impact of this variable turns out to be the opposite of what the literature would expect one to find: judicial perceptions of mental disorder act as aggravating factors in the sentencing of sexual assault offenders when a judge also believes that force has been used in the commission of the offence. The results of this research are then interpreted within the context of labelling theory.

Early legal careers in comparative context: evidence from Canada and the United States

Abstract This paper explores early careers by drawing on nationally representative surveys of lawyers’ early careers in Canada and the United States. It will examine the sorting of lawyers in sectors and settings as well as the mechanisms that are key to understanding this process. Prior research has pointed to the importance of law school credentials, race, gender and social class, which continue to be important lines of demarcation. The comparative lens provides the opportunity to better understand the ways in which these factors are contingent on national context, which, in turn, shapes the symbolic and cultural value of the forms of capital that can provide access to more prestigious, powerful and remunerative positions in the legal profession.

The Status–Health Paradox: Organizational Context, Stress Exposure, and Well-being in the Legal Profession:

Prior research evaluates the health effects of higher status attainment by analyzing highly similar individuals whose circumstances differ after some experience a “status boost.” Advancing that research, we assess health differences across organizational contexts among two national samples of lawyers who were admitted to the bar in the same year in their respective countries. We find that higher-status lawyers in large firms report more depression than lower-status lawyers, poorer health in the American survey, and no health advantage in Canada. Adjusting for income exacerbates these patterns—were it not for their higher incomes, large-firm lawyers would have a greater health disadvantage. Last, we identify two stressors in the legal profession, overwork and work–life conflict, that are more prevalent in the private sector and increase with firm size. Adjusting for these stressors explains well-being differences across organizational contexts. This study documents the role of countervailing mechanisms in health inequality research.

Diversity and talent at the top: Lessons from the boardroom

This Article describes the results from fifty-seven interviews with corporate directors and a limited number of other persons of interest (including institutional investors, executive search professionals, and proxy advisors) regarding their views on corporate board diversity. Diversity challenges and successes in the boardroom make a useful jumping off point for the study of diversity in other professional fields, including law firms, for a number of reasons. First, corporate boardrooms remain remarkably non-diverse, representing a highly visible “old (and, we might add, white) boys’ club.” Second, this club has come under tremendous pressure in recent years, with criticisms ranging from simple business imperatives to social fairness—a debate that is strikingly similar to diversity debates in very dissimilar settings, such as higher education. And finally, the variety of responses around the world to this increased public pressure for boardroom diversity—from legally-mandated quotas in much of Europe to a reliance on market forces in the United States—allows a comparison of many possible approaches to diversity challenges.