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Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2008

Community corrections; sentencing; exchange rates; prison; judges

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance

Offenders, Judges, And Officers Rate The Relative Severity Of Alternative Sanctions Compared To Prison, David May, Nathan T. Moore, Peter B. Wood Jan 2008

Offenders, Judges, And Officers Rate The Relative Severity Of Alternative Sanctions Compared To Prison, David May, Nathan T. Moore, Peter B. Wood

Safety, Security and Emergency Management Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Recent work suggests that offenders rate several alternatives as more severe than imprisonment. We build on this literature by comparing punishment exchange rates generated by criminal court judges with rates generated by offenders and their supervising officers. Findings reveal that none of the three groups rates prison as the most severe sanction and judges and officers rate alternatives as significantly less severe than offenders. Offenders are generally willing to serve less of each alternative to avoid imprisonment than judges or officers. Serving correctional sanctions thus appears to reduce the perceived severity of imprisonment and increase the perceived severity of alternatives.


Offenders, Judges, And Officers Rate The Relative Severity Of Alternative Sanctions Compared To Prison, David May, Nathan Moore, Peter Wood Dec 2007

Offenders, Judges, And Officers Rate The Relative Severity Of Alternative Sanctions Compared To Prison, David May, Nathan Moore, Peter Wood

David May

Recent work suggests that offenders rate several alternatives as more severe than imprisonment. We build on this literature by comparing punishment exchange rates generated by criminal court judges with rates generated by offenders and their supervising officers. Findings reveal that none of the three groups rates prison as the most severe sanction and judges and officers rate alternatives as significantly less severe than offenders. Offenders are generally willing to serve less of each alternative to avoid imprisonment than judges or officers. Serving correctional sanctions thus appears to reduce the perceived severity of imprisonment and increase the perceived severity of alternatives.