Community Corrections Under the Principal Sources of Sentencing Decisions in China: The Challenges in Sentencing Practice

Risk Assessment in sentencing and corrections

Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions∗

Racial and gender disparities are prevalent in the criminal justice system, but the sources of these disparities remain largely unknown. This paper investigates whether judge political affiliation contributes to these disparities using data on over 500,000 federal defendants linked to sentencing judge. Exploiting random case assignment, we find that Republican appointed judges sentence black de...

Teen Court Jurors’ Sentencing Decisions

Teen Courts provide a forum in which juvenile offenders are sentenced by their peers. This system, based on principles of restorative justice, serves as an alternative to the traditional juvenile justice system. Sentencing options typically include restitution, community service, jury duty, apologies, attendance at educational workshops, and tours of correctional facilities. Previous research h...

Community Context and Sentencing Decisions: a Multilevel Analysis

This dissertation uses data on a large sample of felony defendants processed in a nationally representative sample of large urban counties, in conjunction with data on the characteristics of the jurisdictions in which their cases were adjudicated, to examine the influence of community characteristics on sentencing decisions. Drawing on prior theoretical and empirical research, hierarchical line...

The Fragmentation of Sentencing and Corrections in America

After a quarter century of changes, there is no longer anything that can be called “the American system” of sentencing and corrections. As recently as 1975, there was a distinctively American approach, usually referred to as indeterminate sentencing, and it had changed little in the preceding 50 years. Its core features were broad authorized sentencing ranges, parole release, and caseby-case de...