TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessing Cumulative Disadvantage against Minority Female Defendants in State Courts
AU - Kramer, Kelsey L.
AU - Wang, Xia
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
PY - 2019/11/10
Y1 - 2019/11/10
N2 - Prior sentencing research, especially research on cumulative disadvantage, has mainly focused on the treatment of male defendants. Little attention has been paid to female defendants, particularly minority female defendants. Drawing on the selective chivalry, evil women, and focal concerns perspectives and using data from the 1990–2009 State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS), this paper investigates the impact of race/ethnicity for female defendants across individual and successive stages in the sentencing process. The results indicate that ethnicity does not operate via indirect or direct pathways, and therefore no evidence of cumulative disadvantage against Hispanic female defendants was detected. The results, however, do suggest that race operates through direct and indirect pathways to cause more punitive sentencing outcomes for Black female defendants compared to White female defendants, thus providing evidence of cumulative disadvantage against Black female defendants. Theoretical, research, and policy implications are discussed.
AB - Prior sentencing research, especially research on cumulative disadvantage, has mainly focused on the treatment of male defendants. Little attention has been paid to female defendants, particularly minority female defendants. Drawing on the selective chivalry, evil women, and focal concerns perspectives and using data from the 1990–2009 State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS), this paper investigates the impact of race/ethnicity for female defendants across individual and successive stages in the sentencing process. The results indicate that ethnicity does not operate via indirect or direct pathways, and therefore no evidence of cumulative disadvantage against Hispanic female defendants was detected. The results, however, do suggest that race operates through direct and indirect pathways to cause more punitive sentencing outcomes for Black female defendants compared to White female defendants, thus providing evidence of cumulative disadvantage against Black female defendants. Theoretical, research, and policy implications are discussed.
KW - Gender
KW - cumulative disadvantage
KW - race/ethnicity
KW - sentencing disparity
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U2 - 10.1080/07418825.2019.1685122
DO - 10.1080/07418825.2019.1685122
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85075140102
SN - 0741-8825
VL - 36
SP - 1284
EP - 1313
JO - Justice Quarterly
JF - Justice Quarterly
IS - 7
ER -