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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Older men and older women in the arms of criminal law
— offending patterns and sentencing outcomes | | Author(s) | Darrell Steffensmeier, Mark Motivans |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 55B, no 3, May 2000 |
| Pages | pp S141-S151 |
| Keywords | Offenders ; Political science ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | This US study examines whether older defendants receive more lenient sentences compared with their younger counterparts, and whether the effects of ageing on sentencing outcomes manifests itself similarly across male and female offenders. Using statewide data from Pennsylvania (PA) for 1990-94, logit models were used to assess the effects of ageing on the in/out or incarcerative decision, and ordinary least squares models were used to assess the effects on the length-of-term decision. Results show that older offenders of both genders were sentenced less harshly, and if imprisoned, received shorter prison terms. However, the advantage of being older was diminished in the case of drug offending, and the within-gender advantage of age was found to be greater for men than for women. While these age differences in sentence outcome appear to thwart norms of judicial impartiality, they also might reflect legitimate sentencing concerns of judges (in areas such as crime propensity, blameworthiness, and even the extra costs needed to jail older defendants). Therefore, an overall pattern of less severe punishment of older (and/or female) defendants may still be warranted. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-000825230 A |
| Classmark | TGC: VJ: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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