The Effects of Prior Stages of Criminal Justice Decision-Making on Criminal Sentencing: A Test of Three Models

Abstract

Previous research has analyzed the effects of legal and extralegal factors on criminal justice decision-making. Most of this research analyzes discrete stages, rather than multiple stages of the criminal justice process. Using data on felony convictions in a New Jersey State Court, this study compares the utility of a legal model of decision-making, an organizational model of decision-making and Black's (1976) theory of law in predicting several criminal justice outcomes. Providing some support for both the legal model and Black's theory of law, the results indicate the influence of both legal case characteristics and extralegal factors during initial stages of criminal justice processing. However, the influence of extralegal factors on later sentencing decisions through their effects on initial outcomes indicates the operation of organizational factors in criminal justice processing. While offenders are directly penalized by extralegal factors during initial criminal justice processing, they are penalized indirectly at sentencing stages by these same factors. Overall, the results of this analysis provide overwhelming support for an organizational model of criminal justice processing, in which later criminal justice outcomes are greatly a function of outcomes at previous stages. Previous research fails to systematically include prior outcomes in analyses of criminal sentencing. Criminal sentencing research that fails to consider the impact of initial criminal justice outcomes may falsely conclude that extralegal factors have no affect on decision-making.