U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Sex Effects and Sentencing: An Analysis of the Statistical Literature

NCJ Number
156170
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 12 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1995) Pages: 141-175
Author(s)
K Daly; R L Bordt
Date Published
1995
Length
35 pages
Annotation
This study analyzed the literature on gender and sentencing to document the relationship between findings in statistical studies of sex effects, which hold that women receive more lenient sentences, and features of the studies themselves.
Abstract
The analysis is based on 50 court data sets with a total of 249 outcomes, most of which focus on data from the 1970's. For this unweighted sample, 26 cases had sex effects favoring women, while 123 had no sex effects or showed mixed findings. The analysis emphasized three broad types of relationships between case descriptors and findings of sex effects: the statistical procedures used in the analysis, the contextual features of the court and the composition of the sample, and the conceptual dimensions of the research. Results from the weighted sample suggest that sex effects are present in both older and more current data sets. They are most likely to emerge in analyses of felonies, of cases prosecuted in felony courts, of urban courts, and of the decision to incarcerate, rather than length of sentence. 4 tables, 18 notes, and 82 references

Downloads

No download available

Availability