Assessing Local Legal Culture: Practitioner Norms in Four Criminal Courts, 1979
Description
This study attempts to operationalize the concept of local
legal culture by examining differences in the processing of twelve
hypothetical criminal cases in four criminal courts. Questionnaires
asking how these hypothetical cases should best be handled were
administered to judges, district attorneys, and defense attorneys in
four cities: Bronx County (New York City), New York, Detroit,
Michigan, Miami, Florida, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In each city,
the presiding judge, prosecutor, and head of the public defender's
office were informed of the project. Questionnaires were distributed
to prosecuting attorneys and public defenders by their supervisors.
Judges were contacted in person or given questionnaires with a cover
letter from the presiding judge. All questionnaires were completed
anonymously and returned separately by respondents. The variables
include number of years the respondent had been in the criminal
justice system, preferred mode of disposition and of sentencing for
each of the twelve cases, and the respondents' predictions of the
probability of conviction in each case.
Resources
| Name |
Format |
Description |
Link |
|
0 |
ICPSR07808.v1 |
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07808.v1 |
Tags
- attorneys
- courts
- court-cases
- courtroom-proceedings
- sentencing
- disposition-legal
- legal-systems
- judges