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Extra-Legal Attributes and Criminal Sentencing: An Assessment of a Sociological Viewpoint

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

John Hagan
John Hagan*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Extract

Nearly half a century after Thorsten Sellin (1928) first introduced the topic for research, the issue of discrimination in judicial sentencing is still very much with us. Thus, Richard Quinney (1970: 142), among the more provocative critics of our system of criminal justice, observes that

Obviously judicial decisions are not made uniformly. Decisions are made according to a host of extra-legal factors, including the age of the offender, his race, and social class. Perhaps the most obvious example of judicial discretion occurs in the handling of cases of persons from minority groups. Negroes, in comparison to whites, are convicted with lesser evidence and sentenced to more severe punishments.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Spring 1974 , pp. 357 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © The Law and Society Association, 1974.

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Footnotes

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I wish to express my appreciation to Gwynn Nettler, Andrew Harrell, A. R. Gillis, and William Avison for their comments and suggestions in response to earlier drafts of this paper.

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