Dr. Natalie W Goulette

The issue of unwarranted disparity in court decisions has been highlighted in the literature over and over again. Most often, however, scholars have focused on the existence of racial disparities, and not sex-based disparities, in the criminal justice system. In comparison to racial disparities, sex-based disparities, while important, are not perceived to be as detrimental to female defendants or the larger society. While much is known about racial disparities, there is an overall gap in the literature investigating the magnitude of disparities between male and female defendants. Very few studies have attempted to investigate sex-based disparities at multiple stages of case processing, or how decisions made at the early stages of pretrial release and charge reductions may impact sentencing.
Although prior research has shown that female defendants are often treated more leniently than male defendants, no other study has attempted to investigate the magnitude of sex-based disparities across judges. The present research uses a representative sample of criminal cases that were processed from arrest through sentencing in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, during calendar year 2009 to investigate how groups of judges treat specific groups of criminal defendants at the stages of pretrial release, charge reductions, and sentencing. In addition to controlling for legal, extra-legal, and case processing predictors and examining the interactive effects of a defendant's sex, race, and age on several outcomes of interest, this dissertation will examine whether judges' background characteristics condition the effects of a defendant's sex on case dispositions and outcomes. Finally, this dissertation employs multi-level modeling to examine these multiple levels of data without violating the assumptions of linear regression and to control for the compositional effects of each judge's caseload.
The sex-specific multi-level models predicting bond amounts, no bond posted, reduced charges, sentence type, and months in prison for males and females revealed several themes. Consistent with prior literature, females were treated more leniently than males at the phases of pretrial release and sentencing. Second, although important interaction effects were discovered, not all of these effects were consistent with the assumptions of racial threat, gender conflict, or the "evil woman" hypothesis. While the legally relevant factors were strong predictors of pretrial release and sentencing decisions, several of these effects were stronger for males than females. Additionally, it was established that other factors including hiring a private attorney and pretrial detention influenced case outcomes for both males and females. In examining the potential of cumulative disadvantage across the stages of the court system, it was found that pretrial detention influenced sentence length for convicted females only, suggesting that the effect of pretrial detention might be sex-specific. Finally, it was concluded that once between-judge differences in caseload composition were controlled, no significant judicial effects on case outcomes were identified. While these findings raise a number of questions related to gender disparities, they also present several theoretical and policy implications related to gender disparities that should be considered in future research.