Do more Conservative States Impose Harsher Felony Sentences? An Exploratory Analysis of 32 States

Abstract

Felony sentencing is a state public policy outcome lying at the end of a long chain of decisions by legislatures, bureaucracies, and courts. Using data from the 1986 National Judicial Reporting Program study of 32 states, the authors discovered that felony sentences for rape, assault, and robbery were linked to the Erikson, McIver, and Wright index of state conservatism (1987), whereas those for homicide and property crimes were not correlated with ideology. The addition of resource variables such as tax capacity and prison capacity was found not to alter these findings. These results make sense, given the intense public antipathy to crimes against persons; the exception for murder may derive from the fact that a uniform abhorrence of murderers subdues the effect of liberal and conservative ideologies. Therefore, the preferences of the public seem to weigh heavily in the sentencing of violent offenders (other than murderers) but have much less if any effect on the fate of other criminals.