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The Sentence Bargaining of Upperworld and Underworld Crime in Ten Federal District Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

John Hagan  and
Ilene Nagel Bernstein
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Abstract

This paper explores the use of different types of sentence bargaining tactics in ten federal district courts. We distinguish between proactive and reactive prosecutorial orientation, and hypothesize that proactive prosecution of upperworld crime is associated with more explicit sentence bargaining than is the reactive prosecution of underworld crime. We present evidence for and explanations of this relationship.

Type
Current Empirical Research
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Winter 1979 , pp. 467 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The article represents our own views and not necessarily those of NIMH. The findings reported in this paper are exploratory and will be pursued further in a monograph in preparation by the authors. A further discussion of the distinction between proactive and reactive prosecutor's offices can be found in Bernstein and Hagan (1978).

References

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