Economic Inequality and Discrimination in Sentencing

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2555366
AutoresMartha A Myers (autor de correspondencia)
Año1987
Volumen65
Número3
Páginas746
Fecha de publicación1987-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial Forces (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0037-7732 • E-ISSN: 1534-7605
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2578526
OpenAlexW4232944646
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas24

This paper integrates two separate research traditions that link inequality and official responses to crime. It focuses on inequality both as a property of communities where punishment occurs and as a property of punished offenders. Community inequality is conceptualized as a context that conditions differential treatment based on offender attributes and behavior. The analysis of data from Georgia supports such a conceptualization. Inequality tends to foster disproportionately harsher punishment of more dangerous and socially disadvantaged offenders. There are exceptions to these general trends, however. Most notably, white rather than black offenders are at a disadvantage in counties with high racial income inequality and large black populations. Taken as a whole, the results argue for greater attentiveness to the economic context within which sentencing occurs, and for research strategies that can specify the intervening mechanisms through which community inequality operates

Conceptualization · Context (archaeology) · Criminology · Disadvantage · Disadvantaged · Economic growth · Economic inequality · Economics · Geography · Inequality · Political science · Property (philosophy) · Punishment (psychology) · Social inequality · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology