Individual and Contextual Determinants of Prison . Sentence Lengths for Violent Offenders . in Georgia

This study examined the impact of legal, demographic, and contextual variables on the determination of sentence lengths for violent felons who were sentenced to prison without any subsequent term of probation, from 1981 through 1989. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted for all violent crimes and separately for four specific types of violent crime: murder and manslaughter, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery . Results indicated that legally relevant factors such as seriousness of the crime and number of conviction charges had the strongest influence on prison sentence lengths . The direction and strength of the effects of demographic variables on sentence lengths were consistent across most of the violent crimes : male, married, older, and better educated offenders received longer sentences than those without such characteristics. With regard to contextual measures, findings indicated that the average sentence length imposed by a circuit was significantly and positively associated with sentence lengths of violent offenders. We also found that measures of case seriousness within each circuit were negatively associated with prison sentence lengths. For the most part, the remaining contextual variables such as court location, political voting pattern, caseload size and unemployment rate had no significant influence on sentence lengths . Background Between 1981 and 1989 the rate of violent crime in the nation increased by 11 . 7 percent (Maguire & Flanagan, 1992). In response to this increasing violence, several states, including Georgia, enacted policies that permitted greater use of incarceration and longer prison sentences for violent and repeat offenders (Langan, 1991). In addition, Georgia enacted parole guidelines, through which the Board of Pardons and Paroles considered offense seriousness, prior criminal justice experience, and social background factors when making release decisions. Research on criminal sentencing in other jurisdictions (discussed in the next section) has suggested that legal and non-legal factors such as crime seriousness, criminal records, gender, race, education and social class had significant effects on sentencing of offenders . Thus, in trying to understand how Superior Court judges in Georgia made their sentencing decisions in the 1980s, it is important to consider a variety of factors. This report examined the influence of legally relevant, demographic, and contextual factors on prison sentence lengths for violent felons in Georgia from 1981 through 1989. Of particular concern to this research was whether contextual attributes of court circuits, such as caseload size, political voting pattern, and level of punitiveness influenced sentence severity. Further, we assessed whether legally relevant and social background characteristics influenced sentence lengths differently across rural/urban contexts. I. Literature Review Numerous studies have examined the influence of legal variables (e.g., crime severity, prior record) and extra-legal variables (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, employment status) on sentencing decisions. Most recent research has indicated that the presence of a prior record and the seriousness of the current offense are the most influential variables affecting sentence severity. Once these variables are controlled for, the direct effect of race/ethnicity and social class on sentence severity often disappears. Recent research has also addressed the possibility that racial discrimination in sentencing is confined to less serious cases (Spohn & Cederblom, 1991) or to those cases in which the appropriate criminal punishment is less certain (Unnever & Hembroff, 1988; Walsh, 1991). In other words, in more serious cases, the Individual and Contextual Determinants of Prison Sentence Lengths for Violent Offenders in Georgia 3 appropriate sentence is determined by the attributes of the case -the seriousness of the crime and the seriousness of the defendant's prior record. In less serious cases, where appropriate sentences are not clearly indicated, judges may consider non-legal factors, such as the defendant's race, economic status , gender, or court context, in making sentencing decisions. Relatively little attention has been paid to how the larger social and political context affects judges' sentencing decisions. Three studies (Austin, 1981; Hagan, 1977; Pope, 1976) reported that nonwhites received harsher treatment in rural than urban courts, even after controlling for legally relevant variables. Differences in cultural values between urban and rural areas might explain the observed differences in sentencing, although there is little research on this issue. Another explanation relates to bureaucratization. Hagan (1977) found that urban districts in Canada were more bureaucratized (i.e., had higher caseloads and larger staffs and were hierarchical in organization) and were more likely to consider legal than non-legal factors in sentencing decisions than were rural districts . Rural districts, on the other hand, were considerably less bureaucratized and relied more heavily on non-legal factors in sentencing decisions. Similar results were found in Austin's (1981) study in Iowa and Pope's (1976) study in California. More recently, Myers and Talarico (1987) examined the influence of court bureaucratization and court location on sentence outcomes using a stratified random sample of all felons who were sentenced to prison or probation in Georgia between 1976 and 1985. They grouped felony offenses into five categories -common law violent (murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, attempted manslaughter, aggravated assault, rape, sodomy, other sexual assaults), robbery (armed, unarmed, and attempts), burglary, property theft and damage, and drug . Results indicated that judges in urban counties imposed shorter prison terms than did their rural counterparts . White offenders, regardless of court location, received shorter sentences than did non-white offenders . Both caseload size (the number of felony filings per judge) and court specialization (whether or not the court heard mainly felony cases) affected sentencing outcomes. As caseload size increased, the length of prison sentences decreased. Court specialization showed a similar pattern to that of caseload size, in that it varied inversely with prison sentence lengths. Although the research of Myers and Talarico (1987) advanced our knowledge regarding the influence of community contextual variables and court bureaucratization on individual sentencing outcomes, it did not address the influence of political culture on sentencing decisions. Using a measure constructed from public opinion polls, Waltman and Bowers (1993) found that conservatism led to longer sentences for violent offenders but not for property offenders. This differential influence was attributed to the intensity to which citizens in conservative states favored lengthy prison sentences for those convicted of violent offenses. II. The Current Study Because prior research has failed to assess adequately the effects of various contextual measures on sentence severity, the present study focused on the influence of four major contextual variables: (1) the location of the court (urban or rural), (2) the political voting patterns of the jurisdiction (as an indicator of political culture), (3) the caseload size (as one indicator of bureaucratization), and (4) the punitiveness of the circuit. Prior studies revealed that rural courts were less legalistic in their decision making and that extra-legal factors such as race had significant effects on sentencing decisions in rural courts but not in urban courts. Therefore, it was important to evaluate how individual and contextual Individual and Contextual Determinants of Prison Sentence Lengths for Violent Offenders in Georgia 4 variables affected sentencing outcomes across the two environments. In order to assess the impact of political context on sentencing, we created a measure of political voting pattern (percentage of citizens voting for the Republican candidate in presidential elections) for each of the state's 45 judicial circuits. Bureaucratization was conceptualized as the administration of legal cases through various court units following a routine direction. This concept was measured by the size of court caseload under the assumption that the greater the caseload, the higher the level of bureaucratization. In addition to court location, political voting pattern, and caseload size, our study included two measures, a surveillance index and an imprisonment rate, that assessed the degree of punitiveness of a circuit. The surveillance index measured the average sentence length given to offenders and the imprisonment rate measured the tendency of a circuit to use prison incarceration. Other contextual measures examined in our study were the unemployment rate, average household income, crime rate, percentage of population growth over the preceding year, percentage of males in the population, and percentage of the population aged 15 to 24. These measures were included because they have been found in prior research to affect the imprisonment rate at the aggregate level. Most studies have reported that both the unemployment rate and the crime rate are positively related to prison incarceration rates, but mixed findings have been reported for average household income, percentage of population growth, percentage of males in the population, and percentage of the population aged 15 to 24. No study has analyzed how these contextual measures affect sentencing at the individual level. III. Methodology A. Data Source Information on felons sentenced to prison or split sentenced (a prison term followed by probation) was obtained from the inmate file maintained by the Evaluation and Statistics Section of the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC). The inmate file contained an admission record for each prisoner. If an inmate