GENDER AND SOUTHERN PUNISHMENT AFTER THE CIVIL WAR*

Recent scholarship raises two questions about the historical relationship between gender and official responses to criminality. First, to what extent has the formal social control of women changed in the past two centuries? Second, to what extent can changes in the presence of women within the criminal justice system be traced to the same factors that account for the changing presence of men? To address these questions, I focus on women incarcerated for felonies in a southern state (Georgia) between 1870 and 1940. Along with a comparable sample of male offenders, this population forms the basis of a time-series analysis that compares, and seeks to account for, trends in admission rates. The analysis yields little evidence that women disappeared from formal system of punishment. Instead, there were gender similarities in punishment trends and in explanations for those trends. Concluding the paper is a discussion of its implications for further research on gender differences in punishment.     

ECONOMIC THREAT AND RACIAL DISPARITIES IN INCARCERATION: THE CASE OF POSTBELLUM GEORGIA

Economic threat figures prominently in recent explanations of lethal social control directed against blacks after the Civil War. As the position of whites and blacks became more similar, racial antagonisms intensified and found expression in efforts to suppress and intimidate blacks through lynchings and executions. This paper applies the economic threat hypothesis to the exercise of nonlethal social control in Georgia between 1874 and 1936. Time series analysis indicates that declines in racial inequality slightly increased racial disparities in incarceration. More noticeably, they decreased the black male incarceration rate and increased its white counterpart. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and empirical implications of the results.     

REVIEWS

Past or Future Crimes: Deservedness and Dangerousness in the Sentencing of Criminals by Andrew von Hirsch.
Confronting Crime: An American Challenge by Elliot Currie.
The Great American Crime Myth by Kevin N. Wright. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.     

SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND THE SENTENCING BEHAVIOR OF JUDGES*

This paper explores the extent to which the social background of judges affects their sentencing behavior. An analysis of data on felons convicted in Georgia suggests that background has little direct bearing on sentencing outcomes. Instead, it conditions the weight judges attach to legally relevant and social background factors. Expectations about the role of the judge's age, religion, prior prosecutorial experience, and local background received mixed support. Older judges were selectively more punitive than their younger colleagues, but they did not direct this punitiveness toward disadvantaged offenders. Nor was there evidence that male judges were paternalistic toward female offenders. Baptist and Fundamentalist judges also sentenced more punitively, but they were not more likely than other judges to discriminate against black or disadvantaged offenders. Rather, they appeared to hold white and older offenders to a higher standard of behavior. Former prosecutors were selectively punitive and applied the law more uniformly than nonprosecutors. Local judges appeared to be more responsive to public demands for incarceration and sentenced more particularistically. These results illustrate the importance of considering judicial background in conjunction with case attributes, and they underscore the need for research that increases our understanding of judicial background as a conditioner of differential treatment during sentencing.     

URBAN JUSTICE,RURAL INJUSTICE? URBANIZATION AND ITS EFFECT ON SENTENCING*

Using a sample of felons convicted in Georgia between 1976 and June 1982, this study examines rural-urban diyerences in sentencing. Consistent with previous research, it is found that ostensibly similar oflenders are punished diflerently, depending on whether they were convicted in urban rather than rural counties. Diyerences in outcomes are based both on social background and on factors of explicit legal relevance. They occur for decisions about the type and duration of punishment. Finally, they persist even when selected correlates and consequences of urbanization are controlled. Unlike earlier research, however, this study finds that urbanization usually intensijes rather than reduces differential treatment. The paper concludes with possible explanations for the particularism that appears to characterize urban rather than rural courts. Also considered are the theoretical and empirical implications of the findings.     

On the New Frontiers of Justice. A Dialogue

Abstract. The dialogue focuses on the book by Martha C. Nussbaum Frontiers of Justice. The discussion covers the major issues treated in the text, including the relationship between the capabilities approach and the theories of Rawls and Sen, nonhuman animals, people with mental or physical disabilities, and transnational justice. * * Abstract by F. Lelli.
     

Rawls's Political Liberalism. A Reassessment

Since Rawls's Political Liberalism is by now the subject of a wide and deep philosophical literature, much of it excellent in quality, it would be foolhardy to attempt to say something about each of the major issues of the work, or to sort through debates that can easily be located elsewhere. I have therefore decided to focus on a small number of issues where there is at least some chance that a fresh approach may yield some new understanding of the text: Rawls's distinction between “reasonable” and “unreasonable” comprehensive doctrines; the psychological underpinnings of political liberalism; and the possibility that political liberalism might be extended beyond the small group of modern Western societies that Rawls's historical remarks suggest as its primary focus. I also include a discussion of the much‐debated issue of civility and public reason, which could hardly be avoided given its prominence in the book's reception. This paper should therefore be read not as a comprehensive account of the work but as one person's attempt to grapple, very incompletely and imperfectly, with a book that is as great as any philosophy has seen on this topic of great human urgency.