The influence of race, gender, family, and employment status on probationer sanctioning for noncompliance

Abstract

Although there is substantial attention to judicial decision-making during sentencing, fewer studies have examined decision-making post sentencing. Further, the interactions of probationer race and additional background factors have been under studied in post-sentencing decision-making. This study utilizes the focal concerns perspective to examine whether race interacts with gender, family status, and employment status in predicting sanctioning probationers for noncompliance. A sample of probation review hearings within an eight-month period in three domestic violence courts were selected. Results demonstrate that race does not interact with other background factors in influencing a jail sanction, while non-compliant behaviors are the strongest predictors.

Keywords:

• Focal concerns
• gender
• judicial decision-making
• probation
• race

Notes

1 Because there were too few Hispanic females (n = 4), the interaction of ethnicity and gender could not be examined.

2 The qualitative component included critical discourse analysis of the power structures and discourses used by court actors and probationers to frame their non-compliance. It utilized the same original participant observation data collected for this study, albeit with a smaller, purposive sampling of information-rich cases (Author, 2017). The focus of this paper is on the quantitative analysis of decision-making.

3 Indeed, at times judges would state that probationers missed “half of their sessions” or “most of their sessions” without context of how many sessions they were to have attended. Similarly, at times drug use was described as “back and forth” on testing clean and dirty, without a precise number of dirty tests.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danielle M. Romain Dagenhardt

Danielle M. Romain Dagenhardt is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research interests include court processing and gender and racial disparities in court decisionmaking. Her work has been published in journals including Feminist Criminology, Crime & Delinquency, and Journal of Criminal Justice Education.