The main concepts of this journal are citizenship, punishment, and social control. Citizenship as the legal status of being a citizen of this country. Punishment as the infliction of a penalty as retribution for an offense. Social control as a concept that refers to the ways in which one is sentenced based on their citizenship, in this journal. Light, Massoglia, and King state the lack of attention given to the relationship between immigration, citizenship, and capital punishment, based on research between immigration and crime, brings about questioning if citizenship is a primary factor on how one is sanctioned in the United States courts (827).
The authors emphasize, “Analysis of several years of data from the U.S federal courts indicates …show more content…
Sentencing Commission’s (USSC) Standardized Research Files (833). “Our primary analysis uses data from 2008, and our time trend analysis uses data from 1992 to 2008. We use one year of data to reduce any confounding effects from year to year policy and legal changes, but in our supplemental analyses we use three years of data to ensure an adequate sample size. The unit of analysis is each sentenced case, and the universe is all offenders sentenced in U.S. federal courts” (Light, Massoglia, and King 833).The authors point out the USSC data’s richness as a source of information on federal sentencing as it provides offense type and guideline recommended sentence as well as race/ethnicity, age, and gender which are detailed measures with a clear and wide set of controls that will help the research to properly assess if and how citizenship actually affects sentencing outcomes (833). Also, for practical reasons, the analysis will not include offenders charged with entering or remaining in the United States because U.S. citizens are not subjected to this law, therefore there is no comparison group (833).
Light, Massoglia, and King examine, “sentencing disparities using two dependent variables: (1) the decision to incarcerate, and (2) sentence length for those incarcerated. As is conventionally done, incarceration is a dichotomy indicating whether an offender was sentenced to prison. Sentence length is the number of months of incarceration (capped at 470). To reduce skewness we follow prior research and use the natural log of sentence length (Bushway and Piehl 2001).”
The authors emphasize, “Analysis of several years of data from the U.S federal courts indicates …show more content…
Sentencing Commission’s (USSC) Standardized Research Files (833). “Our primary analysis uses data from 2008, and our time trend analysis uses data from 1992 to 2008. We use one year of data to reduce any confounding effects from year to year policy and legal changes, but in our supplemental analyses we use three years of data to ensure an adequate sample size. The unit of analysis is each sentenced case, and the universe is all offenders sentenced in U.S. federal courts” (Light, Massoglia, and King 833).The authors point out the USSC data’s richness as a source of information on federal sentencing as it provides offense type and guideline recommended sentence as well as race/ethnicity, age, and gender which are detailed measures with a clear and wide set of controls that will help the research to properly assess if and how citizenship actually affects sentencing outcomes (833). Also, for practical reasons, the analysis will not include offenders charged with entering or remaining in the United States because U.S. citizens are not subjected to this law, therefore there is no comparison group (833).
Light, Massoglia, and King examine, “sentencing disparities using two dependent variables: (1) the decision to incarcerate, and (2) sentence length for those incarcerated. As is conventionally done, incarceration is a dichotomy indicating whether an offender was sentenced to prison. Sentence length is the number of months of incarceration (capped at 470). To reduce skewness we follow prior research and use the natural log of sentence length (Bushway and Piehl 2001).”