Discrimination or Differential Involvement? A Review of the Research Exploring the Impact of Indigenous Status on Sentencing

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Author(s)
Jeffries, Samantha
Bond, Christine
Year published
2010
Metadata
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Existing court data suggest that adult Indigenous offenders are more likely than non- Indigenous defendants to be sentenced to prison but once imprisoned generally receive shorter terms. Using findings from international and Australian multivariate statistical analyses, this paper reviews the three key hypotheses advanced as plausible explanations for these differences: 1) differential involvement, 2) negative discrimination, 3) positive discrimination. Overall, prior research shows strong support for the differential involvement thesis, some support for positive discrimination and little foundation for negative discrimination ...
View more >Existing court data suggest that adult Indigenous offenders are more likely than non- Indigenous defendants to be sentenced to prison but once imprisoned generally receive shorter terms. Using findings from international and Australian multivariate statistical analyses, this paper reviews the three key hypotheses advanced as plausible explanations for these differences: 1) differential involvement, 2) negative discrimination, 3) positive discrimination. Overall, prior research shows strong support for the differential involvement thesis, some support for positive discrimination and little foundation for negative discrimination in the sentencing of Indigenous defendants. Where discrimination is found, we argue that this may be explained by the lack of a more complete set of control variables in researchers' multivariate models.
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View more >Existing court data suggest that adult Indigenous offenders are more likely than non- Indigenous defendants to be sentenced to prison but once imprisoned generally receive shorter terms. Using findings from international and Australian multivariate statistical analyses, this paper reviews the three key hypotheses advanced as plausible explanations for these differences: 1) differential involvement, 2) negative discrimination, 3) positive discrimination. Overall, prior research shows strong support for the differential involvement thesis, some support for positive discrimination and little foundation for negative discrimination in the sentencing of Indigenous defendants. Where discrimination is found, we argue that this may be explained by the lack of a more complete set of control variables in researchers' multivariate models.
View less >
Conference Title
TASA 2010 Conference Proceedings:Social Causes, Private Lives
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2010. The attached file is reproduced here with permission of the copyright owners for your personal use only. No further distribution permitted. For information about this conference please refer to TASA website or contact the authors.
Subject
Courts and Sentencing