Disproportional Imprisonment of Black and Hispanic Males: Sentencing Discretion,Processing Outcomes,and Policy Structures

Disproportional incarceration of black and Hispanic men has been the subject of much critical commentary and empirical inquiry. Such disproportionality may be due to greater involvement of minority men in serious crime, to discretionary decisions by local justice officials, or to the differential impact of sentencing policies, such as mandatory minimums or sentencing guidelines, that differentially impact minority men. This study investigated the extent to which the disproportional punishment of black and Hispanic men, and local variation in such disproportionality, can be attributed to unexplained disparities in local sentencing decisions, as opposed to the extent to which such differences are mediated by sentencing policies, or case-processing and extralegal factors. We use 2005–2009 federal court and Pennsylvania state court data. Our findings suggest, particularly in Federal courts, that most disproportionality is determined by processes prior to sentencing, especially sentencing policies that differentially impact minority males.     

Books in review

has taught at the universities of London and York. He is author of The Making of Sociology, The Shaking of the Foundations: Family and Society,and The Abolitionists—The Family and Marriage under Attack.Fletcher’s own book on Burt, Science, Ideology, and the Media,will be issued by Transaction in 1991.     

Prostitution, morality crusades and feminism: German-Jewish feminists and the campaign against white slavery

Feminism did not come easily to Germany's middle-class Jewish women. Moral outrage against white slavery and prostitution, however, led many religious housewives to join the Jüdischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women), a Jewish feminist organization. Their attitudes towards their ‘victimized’ or ‘erring young sisters’, their motivations for fighting white slavery, and the tactics they employed in their campaigns are examined in this essay. While they emphasized the virtues of purity and invoked Jewish ethical codes, theirs was not simply a morality crusade. The feminist founders of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (JFB) struggled to persuade their more conservative followers that the sexual abuse of women was linked to their inferior status in German society and Jewish culture. These leaders successfully convinced JFB members to take a giant step beyond their traditional family roles and charitable activities in order to challenge sexism. Thus the fight against white slavery became instrumental in serving wider feminist goals.     

Hispanic College Attendance and the State of Texas GEAR UP Program

This article reports the results of an evaluation of the state of Texas GEAR UP project implemented in six school districts from 1998 to 2005. The intent of the program was to enhance preparation for post‐secondary education among low‐income, Hispanic students. The program was comprised of practical interventions including vertical curriculum alignment, training teachers in advanced placement techniques, encouraging students to take rigorous courses, and increasing outreach about college attendance to students and parents. The central dependent variable is reports by parents of graduating seniors about whether their children would be attending college. A multivariate analysis, controlling for household SES, student grades and attendance, household composition, and language spoken in the home indicates that increased student exposure to the GEAR UP program markedly increases the probability that parents will report that their children are going to attend college.     

Risking Regulation,Regulating Risk: Lessons from the Transatlantic Biotech Dispute

Debates over the future of new technologies frequently implicate governmental policies and regulation, the purpose of which has traditionally been to mitigate the dangers of new technologies through promotion of conditions of safe use. It is increasingly recognized, however, that regulation is predicated on a particular conception of the nature of risk which may or may not correspond to the views and beliefs held by society. Here I explore three broadly related questions in the context of the debates around agricultural biotechnology. First, what are the implications of varying conceptions of risk for regulatory policy in the United States and in the European Union? Second, what are the implications of differing conceptions of risk and resulting regulatory policy for agricultural trade relations between the two giants of international trade? And finally, what lessons might we draw from contemporary disputes over agricultural biotechnology?