Discrimination or Differential Involvement? A Review of the Research Exploring the Impact of Indigenous Status on Sentencing
Year: 2010
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: 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.
Source: Griffith Research Online
Authors: Samantha Jeffries, Christine Bond
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1484502773