NCJ Number
205479
Journal
Social Problems Volume: 51 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2004 Pages: 222-242
Editor(s)
James A. Holstein
Date Published
2004
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This study analyzed pretrial release data on a sample of felony defendants to assess the main and interactive effects of gender and race-ethnicity on both pretrial release decisions and outcomes.
Abstract
An assessment of the research on gender disparities in the case processing of criminal defendants uncovered two major problems: 1) in addition to the lack of studies examining the treatment of women in the courts, there is a lack of research on decisionmaking at earlier stages of the criminal case process; and 2) the scarcity of research examining possible interactive effects between gender and race, and even more so, interactive effects between gender and ethnicity. This study addressed these gaps in the literature by using felony defendant data collected in large urban courts by the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) program of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Data for the years 1990 to 1996 were examined to determine the intersection of gender and race-ethnicity on decisionmaking at the pretrial release stage. The sample consisted of individual-level for formally charged felony defendants in the State courts of the Nation’s 75 most populous counties. The study tested three hypotheses: 1: female defendants would receive more favorable pretrial treatment than male defendants; 2) Black and especially Hispanic defendants would receive less favorable treatment than White defendants; and 3) the gender effect on pretrial decisionmaking would persist, and do so in a generally uniform way, across the racial-ethnic comparison group. Analysis of the data found that both gender and race-ethnicity had a significant direct effect on whether the defendant secured pretrial release, net of controls for legal factors such as prior record and offense conduct. In addition, the study found that female defendants were more likely to receive pretrial release than their male counterparts, while Hispanic and Black defendants were more likely to be detained than similarly situated White defendants. Most significantly, the authors found that White females, compared to all other gender-racial/ethnic defendant groups, were the most likely to receive pretrial release; while Hispanic males received the most disadvantaging decisions throughout the pretrial release process and were the group most likely to be detained. A major factor in this last finding may be the inability of many Blacks and Hispanics to post bail to gain their release, highlighting the often overlooked influence that poverty and social class have on sentencing and case-process decisionmaking. 4 tables and 56 references