ABSTRACT

The focal concerns approach has been applied broadly in the sentencing literature. Research that has relied on this perspective generally finds that young, non-white men tend to receive the most punitive criminal sanctions. This perspective has less often been applied to non-custodial types of punishments, such as fines. Using data from the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) database from 2009, we examine the effects of defendant characteristics on fine imposition and amounts. In contrast to other sentencing research, we find that Black men under 50 and Black women over 50 are least likely to receive fines. Additionally, Hispanic men 31–49 receive fines of the greatest amounts. The current study contributes to sentencing research by focusing on fines as the sentencing outcome instead of the commonly used sentencing severity and our findings are unique to this area of research.

摘要

焦点关注法已广泛应用于量刑文献中。基于这种观点的研究通常发现，年轻的非白人男性往往会受到最严厉的刑事制裁。这种观点很少适用于非拘禁类型的惩罚，例如罚款。使用 2009 年州法院处理统计 (SCPS) 数据库中的数据，我们研究了被告特征对罚款征收和金额的影响。与其他量刑研究相比，我们发现 50 岁以下的黑人男性和 50 岁以上的黑人女性被罚款的可能性最小。此外，31-49 岁的西班牙裔男性会收到最高金额的罚款。