| Abstrakt: |
Research on imprisonment rates in the US has identified a number of structural, cultural, and political factors that are significantly related to states' imprisonment rates and/or growth in imprisonment rates since the 1970s. Political theories, in particular, argue that "law and order" politics associated with the Republican Party directly led to a variety of sentencing reforms that in turn increased incarceration rates. These include determinate and presumptive sentencing, mandatory minimums, habitual offender statutes, and "truth in sentencing" laws. However, previous research has not specified the mechanisms linking structural correlates with imprisonment rates. Few studies have examined the effects of sentencing reforms on imprisonment rates or on racial disproportionality in imprisonment. Neither has research examined variation between states in the impact of these reforms, or tested whether sentencing policies mediate the effects of structural and political forces. This study uses data collected by the Vera Institute of Justice to examine the impact of state-level sentencing policies on imprisonment rates from 1975 to 2002. Specifically, we examine whether sentencing reforms mediate the effects of social structural and political factors on imprisonment rates and on racial disproportionality in imprisonment rates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
