Judicial Attitudes in Sentencing

Professor Green offers readers a careful and sophisticated study of the sentencing policy of one of the criminal courts in Philadelphia. The author is aware of the danger of overlooking the norm-setting function of the criminal law and sets out in detail the criteria used in practice to determine the nature and severity of sentence. studied. The influence of extraneous considerations which suggested themselves in the preliminary investigation, such as biases in favor of youthful and female offenders and against colored offenders, were shown on intensive analysis to be the result of differences in the pattern of criminal behavior by the offenders rather than of hidden prejudices by the judges. Even differences in the apparent severity or leniency of particular judges tended to disappear on full investigation of the circumstances of the cases they decided.