Ilene H. Nagel

Abstract: The relation between gender and criminality is strong, and is likely to remain so. Women have traditionally been much less likely than men to commit violent crimes, and that pattern persists today. Rates of female involvement in some forms of property crime-notably petty theft and fraud-appear to be increasing. However, while the relative increase in women's property crime involvement is significant, female participation even in these crimes remains far less than that of men. The relation of gender to case processing decisions in the criminal justice system varies from stage to stage. Although the pertinent literature is plagued by methodological and interpretive problems, several tentative conclusions can be offered. Women are more likely than men, other things equal, to be released on recognizance; however, when bail is set, the amount of bail does not appear to be affected by the defendant's gender. There is no clear evidence that the defendant's gender systematically affects prosecution, plea negotiat...

Abstract: This study analyzes data for state criminal defendants prosecuted in New York to determine the bases upon which judges make pretrial release decisions for these defendants. Treating statutory law as defining the category of legal variables, it finds legal factors substantially affect decisions about whether to release a defendant on recognizance, the amount of bail required, and whether to offer a defendant a cash alternative to a surety bond. The impact of these factors varies, however, depending upon the particular decision being made. Factors not prescribed in the statute-extra-legal factors-are also found to affect these pretrial release decisions. Their impact, too, is decision context specific. Among the extra-legal factors that affect pretrial release decisions, the effects of status characteristics of the defendant pale in comparison to the effects of bench bias and measures of the defendant's dangerousness.

Abstract: Our purpose is to bridge the criminal justice and stratification research literatures and to pursue the argument that homologous structural principles stratify allocation processes across central institutions of American society. The principle observed here in the making of bail decisions, as in earlier studies of the allocation of earnings, is that stratification resources operate to the greater advantage of whites than blacks. The operation of this principle is established through the estimation of covariance structure models of pretrial release decisions affecting 5660 defendants in 10 federal courts. Education and income are treated in this study as observed components of a composite construct, stratification resources, which works to the greater advantage of whites. Prior record is also found to operate to the greater advantage of whites. Two further variables, dangerousness and community ties, increase bail severity among blacks and whites. While the effect of community ties has been legally legitimized since the Bail Reform Act of 1966, the effect of dangerousness was not so legitimized until the Bail Reform Act of 1984. However, because our data precede the latter act, they confirm that this act simply reinstitutionalized earlier practice. Meanwhile, our race-specific findings may explain why although this and earlier studies find negligible main effects of race on criminal justice outcomes, black Americans nonetheless perceive more criminal injustice than do whites. In the criminal justice system, as in other spheres of American society, whites receive a better return on their resources, but our findings that the statutory severity of the offense and dangerousness work to the relative disadvantage of white defendants challenges conflict and labeling theory's one-dimensional characterization of black defendant disadvantage.

Abstract: This 1966 paperback edition of a publication which first appeared in 1963 has by now been widely reviewed as a worthy contribution to the sociological study of deviant behavior. Its current appearance as a paperback is a testimonial both to the quality of the work and to the prominence of deviant behavior in this generation. In general the author places deviance in perspective, identifies types of deviant behavior, considers the role of rule makers and enforcers, and some of the problems in studying deviance. In addition, he develops a sequential model of deviance relying on the concept of career, a concept originally developed in studies of occupations. In his study of a particular kind of deviance, the use of marihuana, the author posits and tests systematically an hypothesis about the genesis of marihuana use for pleasure. The hypothesis traces the sequence of changes in individual attitude

Abstract: In this essay we sketch core elements of feminist thought and demonstrate their relevance for criminology. After reviewing the early feminist critiques of the discipline and the empirical emphases of the 1970s and early 1980s, we appraise current issues and debates in three areas: building theories of gender and crime, controlling men's violence toward women, and gender equality in the criminal justice system. We invite our colleagues to reflect on the androcentrism of the discipline and to appreciate the promise of feminist inquiry for rethinking problems of crime and justice.

Abstract: Analyses of the effects of America's 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 parent's imprisonment on children's 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.

Abstract: The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 mandated major restructuring of federal sentencing through specific sentencing guidelines. New sentencing guidelines developed by the United States Sentencing Commission and adopted in 1987 explicitly linked sentencing to "relevant conduct"-offense characteristics-and sought to abolish unwarranted sentence disparity. The guidelines substantially reduced judicial discretion and resulted in a criminalization and sentencing process that is largely prosecutor controlled. The author has generated hypotheses that relate defendant characteristics, guilty pleas, and departures from sentencing guidelines to sentence outcomes under the federal sentencing guidelines. She first examined the variables influencing sentence severity for the drug offenders who were sentenced in 1991-92. She then explored the interaction effects by estimating the tobit equation separately for three groups-black, white, and Hispanic defendants-to discover whether defendant's ethnicity conditions the effect of other defendant characteristics, guidelines-defined legally relevant variables, guilty pleas, and departures on sentence severity. Her analysis reveals that disparity in federal sentencing of drug offenders is linked not only to offense-related variables, as structured by the guidelines, but also to defendant characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, educational level, and noncitizenship, which under the guidelines are specified as legally irrelevant. Under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, Congress established the United States Sentencing Commission and charged it with the task of designing a sentencing structure that would avoid "unwarranted sentencing disparity among defendants with similar records who had been found guilty of similar criminal conduct" (28 U.S.C. 991(b) (1) (B) (Supp. 1993)). In November 1987 the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were enacted. Among social scientists, legal scholars, and court officials, the sentencing guidelines ignited a debate over the legal and social consequences of the new structure of sentencing. The focus of my research is to explore empirically three issues that are central to the goals of federal sentencing reform and the policy debate that has emerged since state reform efforts began in the 1970s. My first concern is to estimate empirically the direct effect on the length of imprisonment of defendant characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, gender, education, number of dependents, which are explicitly stated in the federal guidelines as legal irrelevant; see U.S. Sentencing Commission 1989: 5H1.1-5Hl.10). Drawing on my earlier work (Albonetti 1991), I specify hypotheses that reflect the merger of uncertainty avoidance/causal attribution theoretical perspectives. My second concern is to estimate the direct effects on sentence outcomes of guilty pleas and of sentences that depart from the guidelines. Although the federal guidelines substantially reduce the wide latitude of discretion once enjoyed by sentencing judges, the guidelines do not restrict prosecutorial discretion. Numerous legal scholars and social scientists argue that the federal sentencing guidelines shift discretion away from sentencing judges to prosecuting attorneys (Tonry 1996; Standen 1993; Nagel & Schulhofer 1992, to name a few). Under the federal guidelines, a prosecuting attorney can circumvent the guidelinedefined sentence through charging, guilty plea negotiations, and motions for a sentence that is a departure from the guideline sentence. As noted by Nagel and Schulhofer (1992), the guidelines' emphasis on directly linking sentence outcomes to relevant conduct was intended as a structural constraint that would eliminate unwarranted disparity resulting from judicial control over sentencing. However, in the absence of constraints on prosecutorial discretion over charging decisions, guilty plea negotiations, and motions for "substantial assistance"'l departures, these process-related decisions offer potential avenues through which prosecutors can circumvent guideline-defined sentence outcomes. …

Abstract: Although racial discrimination emerges some of the time at some stages of criminal justice processing-such as juvenile justice-there is little evidence that racial disparities result from systematic, overt bias. Discrimination appears to be indirect, stemming from the amplification of initial disadvantages over time, along with the social construction of "moral panics" and associated political responses. The "drug war" of the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated the disproportionate representation of blacks in state and federal prisons. Race and ethnic disparities in violent offending and victimization are pronounced and long-standing. Blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, suffer much higher rates of robbery and homicide victimization than do whites. Homicide is the leading cause of death among young black males and females. These differences result in part from social forces that ecologically concentrate race with poverty and other social dislocations. Useful research would emphasize multilevel (contextual) d...