Community Variation in the Disposition of Criminal Cases: The Role of Social, Cultural, and Political Context

SES-0451848埃里克·鲍默密苏里州圣路易斯大学该项目将研究刑事案件的结果是否受到处理这些案件的社区特征的影响。 具体而言，从各种理论角度出发，该项目审查了适用于刑事被告的法律的制裁是否在具有以下特点的司法管辖区更为严厉：恐惧程度较高、公众对正式社会控制的惩罚措施的支持程度较高、政治保守派较为集中、社会资本水平较高或较低，认为黑人具有威胁性或对黑人持偏见态度的白人相对较多。 除了研究这些社区属性的直接影响外，该项目还将探讨它们是否有助于解释人口构成、种族不平等、隔离、宗教构成、地区和暴力率等结构性因素对法律的结果的影响。 这些方面的社区社会，文化和政治背景对重罪案件的结果的影响将在刑事司法过程的四个阶段进行审查：检察筛选，审前拘留的决定，判决和判刑。 这些问题将通过对来自州法院处理统计（SCPS）计划和司法统计局（BJS）谋杀逮捕档案的重罪案件数据进行多层次和嵌套logit回归分析，以及社区层面（即，县和大都市区）的数据，这些数据来自综合社会调查（GSS）和各种其他来源，这些来源捕捉了处理这些案件的法律的、社会、文化和政治背景。 该项目通过制定和纳入据信影响刑事司法程序各阶段结果的邻近社区条件的措施，并通过评价据信影响这些结果的较远社区结构因素的一些最常提到的原因，对现有研究作出了重大贡献。 该项目有望提高我们对刑事案件处理中的地理差异的理解，并发展和修改法律适用理论。 该项目将产生若干更广泛的影响。 该项目将把研究和教育活动结合起来，促进对一名研究生的培训和指导，这名研究生将参加研究的所有阶段，并将帮助规划和教授围绕拟议研究中审查的主题组织的研究生和本科生方法课程。 这些课程将大大加强东道机构的社会科学课程，并将有助于扩大历史上代表性不足的群体，特别是妇女和非裔美国人对研究的参与。 这些课程的开发和教学具有双重目标，即让学生参与项目中涉及的具体研究问题，并激励和鼓励学生考虑从事研究和教学事业。 该项目还将通过以创新的方式使用GSS来构建理论文献中强调的社区一级条件的更直接措施，从而对社会科学研究的基础设施产生更广泛的影响。

SES-0451848Eric BaumerUniversity of Missouri Saint LouisThis project will examine whether the outcomes of criminal cases are shaped by features of the communities in which they are processed. Specifically, drawing from a variety of theoretical perspectives, the project examines whether legal sanctions applied to criminal defendants are more severe in jurisdictions characterized by higher levels of fear, greater public support for punitive measures of formal social control, a larger concentration of political conservatives, higher or lower levels of social capital, and relatively more whites who perceive blacks to be threatening or who hold prejudiced attitudes toward blacks. In addition to examining the direct effects of these community attributes, the project will explore whether they help to interpret the effects on legal outcomes of structural factors such as population composition, racial inequality, segregation, religious composition, region, and rates of violence. The influence of these aspects of community social, cultural, and political context on felony case outcomes will be examined at four stages of the criminal justice process: prosecutorial screening, the pretrial detention decision, adjudication, and sentencing. These issues will be examined with multilevel and nested logit regression analyses of data on felony cases from the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) program and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) murder arrest file, and community-level (i.e., county and Metropolitan Area) data from the General Social Survey (GSS) and a variety of other sources that capture the legal, social, cultural, and political context in which these cases were processed. The project contributes significantly to existing research by developing and incorporating measures of the proximate community conditions believed to influence outcomes at various stages of the criminal justice process and by evaluating some of the most often stated reasons for why more distal community structural factors are believed to shape those outcomes. The project holds promise for enhancing our understanding of geographic differences in the disposition of criminal cases and for developing and modifying theories of the application of law. The project will yield several broader impacts. The project will integrate research and educational activities by facilitating the training and mentoring of a graduate student who will participate in all phases of the research and who will help plan and teach graduate and undergraduate methods courses organized around the themes examined in the proposed study. These courses will significantly enhance the social science curriculum at the host institution, and they will help broaden the participation in research of historically underrepresented groups, particularly women and African Americans. The courses will be developed and taught with the dual objectives of engaging students in the specific research issues addressed in the project and of stimulating and encouraging students to consider pursuing careers in research and teaching. The project also will yield broader impacts for the infrastructure for social science research by using the GSS in an innovative way to construct more direct measures of the community-level conditions emphasized in the theoretical literature.