| Abstract: | A defendant's prior criminal record is usually conceived of as a ubiquitous indicator of severity of sanction. Utilizing Black's (1976) conception of prior criminality— respectability—we argue that other, nonlegal indicators of respectability will also affect the sanctions female criminal defendants incur. In addition to prior criminal record, indicators of respectability include prior psychiatric care, previous drug or alcohol abuse, employer censorship, and peer deviance. Estimating a set of multivariate equations for a sample of 1,034 female defendants, we find support for Black's proposition: (1) regardless of the offense, the lower a woman's respectability, the greater the likelihood that she will receive a more severe sentence; and (2) respectability has similar effects on sentencing regardless of whether the indicators are internal or external to the criminal justice system. The degree to which these findings can be construed as sex specific is discussed. |
