Multilevel Test of Minority Threat Effects on Sentencing

• NCJ Number: 231365
• Journal: Journal of Quantitative Criminology Volume: 26 Issue: 2 Dated: June 2010 Pages: 191-215
• Author(s): Xia Wang; Daniel P. Mears
• Date Published: June 2010
• Length: 25 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper explores whether differenct measures of racial and ethnic threats influence jail versus prison sentencing decisions.

Abstract

Prior studies of criminal sanctioning have focused almost exclusively on individual-level predictors of sentencing outcomes. However, in recent years, scholars have begun to include social context in their research. Building off of this workand heeding calls for testing the racial and ethnic minority threat perspective within a multilevel framework and for separating prison and jail sentences as distinct outcomesthis paper examines different dimensions of minority threat and explores whether they exert differential effects on prison versus jail sentences. The findings provide support for the racial threat perspective, and less support for the ethnic threat perspective. They also underscore the importance of testing for non-linear threat effects and for separating jail and prison sentences as distinct outcomes. The authors discuss the findings and their implications for theory, research, and policy. Tables, figures, appendixes, and references (Published Abstract)