The United States criminal justice system has continued along a path of punitive policies and practices that began in the 1980s. These punitive measures include both the expansion of existing enhancements, such as Habitual Offender laws, as well as new initiatives, such as the Florida Career Offender Registration Act. In the State of Florida, both laws allow for the application of enhanced sentences to defendants who are designated as either "Habitual Offenders" or "Career Offenders." The application of these laws is completely discretionary and as such, state prosecutors seek the designations for only a fraction of the defendants who qualify. Utilizing Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling, this study examines whether individual attributes, such as race and ethnicity, impact an individual's likelihood of receiving either the Habitual or Career Offender designation. Additionally, the second level of analysis incorporates county level characteristics into the equation and tests whether these characteristics have either a direct or a cross level effect on the relationship between race, ethnicity and the likelihood that an individual will receives one of the designations. Situational threat is examined as a context for individual level effects in the form of both crime types and specific crime categories. The broad theoretical framework that guides the research is grounded in the social threat and social control perspective. For the Habitual Offender outcome, results indicate that both black and Hispanic defendants have significantly higher odds of being Habitualized when compared to white defendants with similar personal characteristics and legal attributes. The race and ethnicity effect on the Habitual Offender outcome is more prominent for drug offenders and in counties with a higher number of cases per judge, higher drug arrest rate and a higher violent crime rate. Results for the Career Offender sample indicate that both black and Hispanic defendants have significantly lower odds of receiving the Career Offender designation than similarly situated white defendants. Defendants who went to trial and those accused of violent offenses are the most likely to be sentenced as a Career Offender as are defendants sentenced in counties with a higher number of cases per judge and a higher percent of Hispanic residents. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2007. / September 17, 2007. / Social Control, Career Offenders, Social Threat, Habitual Offenders, Sentencing, Race / Includes bibliographical references. / Theodore Chiricos, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joyce Carbonell, Outside Committee Member; William Bales, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_181937 |
| Contributors | Hughes, Cynthia Caravelis (authoraut), Chiricos, Theodore (professor directing dissertation), Carbonell, Joyce (outside committee member), Bales, William (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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