The Process is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court

5. Outcomes: Adjudication and Sentencing

CHAPTER 5 Outcomes: Adjudication and Sentencing Introduction This chapter reports on my efforts to account for outcomes at adjudication and sentencing in terms of three sets of factors: legal considerations; social characteristics of principal decision makers; and structural characteristics of the system itself. A great many social scientists have focused on one or another of these sets; my initial goal was to integrate them into a single model and then examine the relative importance of each one. Figure 5.I depicts this task. But during this effort my research strategy changed, and what I once envisioned as the core of a full-length study has now been reduced to a single chapter, a chapter which reports mostly negative findings. As I immersed myself in the operations of the court, first to collect data and later as a participant-observer, I came to appreciate the ways in which organization and attitude affected the handling of cases, factors which are not easily captured in quantitative analyses and which are most visible during rather than before the research process. I also began to question the value of quantitative analysis in developing explanatory 123 THE PROCESS IS THE PUNISHMENT FIGURE 5.1 Model of Factors Affecting Case Disposition and Sentencing in Criminal Courts Characteristics of Defendants / Disposition guilt/innocence and sentences Characteristics of Decision Makers Legal Factors -------------------------------- System Factors analyses of criminal courts, particularly lower criminal courts in which official records are notoriously unreliable and important outcomes are often distinguished by subtle differences not easily captured on a close-ended data collection form. Quantitative analysis, particularly multivariate analysis, of the factors identified by previous social science research continued to serve a useful purpose in this study, although more in relation to negative than to positive findings. The results caused me to examine conventional explanations and at times to alter my questions, to ask why these conventional explanations are so often believed, even by participants in a system in which they obviously do not apply. The negative results also constitute indirect evidence for the argument that the more subtle factors of organization and attitude are most likely to provide satisfactory explanations of the criminal process. 124 OUTCOMES: ADJUDICATION AND SENTENCING The discipline of developing a data collection form leads one, as nothing else can quite so convincingly, to appreciate the complexities of the criminal process. Trying to untangle and understand the labyrinth of the court and the vast array of alternatives and options open to participants, to trace the tortured paths of the accused through the court, served as a sobering introduction to the complexities of the subject. It forced me to map out the case-handling process systematically, an exercise of inestimable value. It alerted me to alternatives and practices I could not easily have discovered by questioning even the most cooperative of informants or deduced from the most thorough direct observation, since certain practices are taken so much for granted by those who employ them that they become all but invisible. Many of the subtleties I probe in detail in the next chapter were suggested by the analysis summarized in this chapter . In short, quantitative analysis launched rather than wrapped up the investigation. The Variables Traditional legal analysis emphasizes the importance of legal factors, suggesting that strict application of the rule of law determines the outcomes of criminal cases and the severity of sentences. It also suggests that factors such as strength of evidence should playa dominant role in determining guilt or innocence , and that the seriousness of the charge in combination with the offender's prior record should be the main considerations in sentencing decisions. In contrast, social scientists have typically sought to account for outcomes in criminal cases in terms of the social and personal characteristics of the people involved in the process. This emphasis stems from traditional sociological concerns with stratification and organization, and focuses on such factors as the defendant's age, race, sex, social class, and dress; and on the 125 THE PRO C E S SIS THE PUN ISH 1>1 E N T characteristics of court officials, such as party affiliation, and age. A third approach focuses on system factors or structural influences . This approach suggests that the way cases are handled is shaped by the court's own interests and the ways structural factors are manipulated for strategic purposes. The interests of organizational maintenance account for the practice of plea bargaining and for...