Social Status and Sentences of Female Offenders

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Abstract
To date, most disposition studies have been limited to exploring the effects of male defendants' social characteristics on severity of disposition; the few studies that have included female defendants have done so primarily to see if the sex of the offenders differentially affected sentencing. Utilizing the propositions set forth in The Behavior of Law (Black, 1976), this research looks at the role played by a woman's social status in determining the type of criminal court disposition she receives. Conviction data from a sample of 1,034 female defendants are explored to estimate the effects of (1) economic rank (2) prior criminal record, (3) age, and (4) employment status, controlling for the offense of conviction, on severity of criminal court disposition. The analyses indicate that women's various social characteristics are in fact good predictors of the nature and extent of their sentences and, further, that indicators of respectability and stratification/social integration contribute most to explaining these criminal court dispositions. Accordingly, the propositions of Black's theory of law are generally supported by the results of this study.

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