A sociolegal analysis of Canadian youth justice: The impact of offender's race on judicial decisions

There is evidence to suggest that even within ostensibly egalitarian systems of justice young offenders are, at least in part, socially selected. Police, court workers, lawyers, and judges make prejudgments of young offenders on the basis of extralegal as well as legal factors. This study examined the influence of extralegal variables, especially offender's race, on judicial outcomes including detention on arrest, plea, adjudication, and sentencing. While the principal focus was the effect of offender's race, the effects of other attributes including sex, age, family support, and counsel status were incorporated into the analysis to present a comprehensive explanatory model of justice.Loglinear/logit modelling techniques were employed to assess the simultaneous effects of social and legal variables. In summary, the data consistently supported the claim that at all levels of the justice process extralegal variables, most noticeably race, had a substantial systematic influence on judicial decisions, especially when seriousness of offense and criminal record were controlled. Most importantly, the study showed that the effects of race occured primarily in interaction with both legal and extralegal factors.     

A rational choice model of citizen participation in high and low commitment electoral activities

Weisberg and Grofman (1981) propose a rational choice model of voter turnout which they test with data from the 1976 Presidential election. We extend and generalize that model to cover a wide variety of forms of electoral participation including working on a campaign, wearing campaign buttons, and talking to others about the campaign. We find that voters who see a difference between the candidates, with one candidate positively evaluated and the other negatively, are roughly twice as likely to participate in high involvement electoral activities as are those who are alienated from or indifferent to the candidates.