Law Commons^™

The Legal/Extra-Legal Controversy: Judicial Decisions In Pretrial Release, Ilene H. Nagel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This study analyzes data for state criminal defendants prosecuted in New York to determine the bases upon which judges make pretrial release decisions for these defendants. Treating statutory law as defining the category of legal variables, it finds legal factors substantially affect decisions about whether to release a defendant on recognizance, the amount of bail required, and whether to offer a defendant a cash alternative to a surety bond. The impact of these factors varies, however, depending upon the particular decision being made. Factors not prescribed in the statute-extra-legal factors—are also found to affect these pretrial release decisions. Their impact, …

Gender And Crime: Offense Patterns And Criminal Court Sanctions, Ilene H. Nagel, John Hagan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The relation between gender and criminality is strong, and is likely to remain so. Women have traditionally been much less likely than men to commit violent crimes, and that pattern persists today. Rates of female involvement in some forms of property crime-notably petty theft and fraud-appear to be increasing. However, while the relative increase in women's property crime involvement is significant, female participation even in these crimes remains far less than that of men.

The relation of gender to case processing decisions in the criminal justice system varies from stage to stage. Although the pertinent literature is plagued by methodological …

Havens, Jenkins, And Salvucci, And The Defendant's "Right" To Testify, Craig M. Bradley

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Three recent Supreme Court opinions that enlarge the scope of permissible impeachment may substantially influence the criminal defendant's decision whether to take the stand. In this article, Professor Bradley evaluates the current status of the defendant's "right" to testify, assesses the impact of these cases on that right, and offers cogent advice on effective strategies for practitioners.

Griffin V. California: Still Viable After All These Years, Craig M. Bradley

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Right To Counsel In Criminal Cases By Sheldon Krantz, Et. Al., Patrick L. Baude

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Charge Reduction: An Intermediary Stage In The Process Of Labelling Criminal Defendants, Ilene Nagel Bernstein, Edward Kick, Jan T. Leung, Barbara Schulz

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The interactionist perspective emphasizes the imperfect correspondence between alleged deviance and societal reactions. Moreover, it is asserted that values of reactors, statuses of the alleged deviant, and bureaucratic constraints of deviance processing organizations help explain some of that imperfection. Focusing on one intermediary deviance processing stage, i.e., plea bargaining, we explore the degree to which our data are consonant with interactionist assumptions. For a sample of 1,435 male and female criminal defendants, we find the favorability of the charge reduction outcome is partly explained by values of reactors, statuses of the defendant, and bureaucratic constraints of the court. Thus, our …

Societal Reaction To Deviants: The Case Of Criminal Defendants, Ilene Nagel Bernstein, William R. Kelly, Patricia A. Doyle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Recent reformulations of the societal reaction theory argue that the thesis is a perspective rather than a theory, and that the perspective is meant to provide a set of sensitizing concepts to those researching deviance. This research examines the degree of congruence between hypotheses deduced from those assertions and a set of real world occurrences. Data for a sample of male defendants charged with felony offenses are examined to estimate the effects of (1) deviants' social attributes, (2) the specific societal reactors, (3) the values placed on certain offenses and (4) the organizational imperatives of the deviance-controlling organization, controlling for …