As the incarceration rate expanded in the late 20th century, social threat theory was increasingly utilized to explain this growing punishment trend. While primarily finding support, this research has gone only so far as to examine the incarceration decision and sentencing severity. It is a common practice throughout the United States to employ what is known as gaintime in order to reduce an offender's actual time served. As a result, sentence length frequently does not reflect the true punishment experienced. This study seeks to assess the role of racial, ethnic, and economic threat in terms of the previously unutilized measure of the punishment experienced, rather than the punishment prescribed. By means of HLM analysis, dynamic measures of percent black, percent Hispanic, and percent unemployed within Florida's 67 counties were assessed in terms of their relationship to individual level outcomes of sentence length, time served, and percent of sentence served for all Florida inmates admitted to prison between 1990 and 2010. While there were significant threat effects found for the primary outcomes of interest, they were in an unexpected negative direction. These results necessitate further exploration of both the processes by which growth in threat groups affects punishment outcomes, and also the aspect of actual time served in prison as a separate form of social control in the threat relationship. / A Thesis submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester, 2014. / July 8, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references. / William Bales, Professor Directing Thesis; Ted Chiricos, Committee Member; Brian Stults, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_254478 |
| Contributors | Nadel, Melissa R. (authoraut), Bales, William (professor directing thesis), Chiricos, Ted (committee member), Stults, Brian (committee member), College of Criminology and Criminal Justice (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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