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Jacob Church_Dissertation.pdf (1.06 MB)

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Sentencing in a New Era: The Effects of Sentencing Reforms on Racial and Gender Disparities in Sentencing Outcomes

Church, Jacob Stewart
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8283-1347
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1658755256488587

Abstract Details

2022, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology.
The Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) is one attempt to alleviate the effects of mass incarceration. This initiative largely focuses on reducing recidivism and lowering the financial cost of incarceration (Sabol and Baumann 2020). However, JRI reforms largely fail to address the racialized nature of mass incarceration (Tonry 2011). By examining the population of adult White and Black felony offenders in North Carolina between 2000 and 2018, this dissertation uses the focal concerns perspective and casual attribution theory to examine how two JRI reforms relate to changes in the likelihood of being incarcerated, changes in the prison and jail sentence lengths offenders receive, and the racial and gender disparities in these outcomes. The results of this dissertation are mixed. JRI reforms in North Carolina, which recalculated measures of an offender's criminal history, failed to lower the likelihood that an offender would be incarcerated. In contrast, JRI reforms in North Carolina are related to reductions in offenders' prison and jail sentence lengths despite not explicitly attempting to change these sentence lengths. Most importantly, racial and gender disparities in sentencing outcomes persist under North Carolina's JRI sentencing reforms. Across time, Black men receive the longest incarceration sentence lengths and highest odds of being incarcerated when compared to Black women, White men, and White women. As detailed in the dissertation, these findings may demonstrate that color-blind reforms to sentencing policies will only reproduce racial disparities in sentencing outcomes.
Katrina Bloch (Committee Co-Chair)
Tiffany Taylor (Committee Co-Chair)
Daniel Chand (Committee Member)
Starr Solomon (Committee Member)
Christopher Dum (Committee Member)
151 p.
Criminology
Justice Reinvestment Initiative, focal concerns perspective, North Carolina, Sentencing policies, racial disparities, gender disparities

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Church, J. S. (2022). Sentencing in a New Era: The Effects of Sentencing Reforms on Racial and Gender Disparities in Sentencing Outcomes [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1658755256488587

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Church, Jacob. Sentencing in a New Era: The Effects of Sentencing Reforms on Racial and Gender Disparities in Sentencing Outcomes. 2022. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1658755256488587.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Church, Jacob. "Sentencing in a New Era: The Effects of Sentencing Reforms on Racial and Gender Disparities in Sentencing Outcomes." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1658755256488587

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1658755256488587
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© 2022, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.