NCJ Number
74117
Date Published
1980
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This essay poses the question whether restitution -- which purports to be an alternative to incarceration -- may not often be applied in practice as an addition to imprisonment to increase the courts' involvement with individual offenders.
Abstract
In addition, it asks whether restitution is imposed on the basis of the circumstances of the crime and its victim (if any) or according to the offender's personal characteristics and previous crime history. A sample of 383 adult felony dispositions from the district courts of 17 Minnesota counties (comprising probation-only, restitution-and-probation, incarceration-only, and incarceration-and-restitution sentences) was examined using the techniques of discriminant analysis to precisely identify differences among the groups. The researcher attempted to relate such variables as demographic characteristics of offenders (including their socioeconomic status) and previous criminal history, as well as the seriousness of the present committing offense, to the type of sentence imposed by the judge. The hypothesis of the restitution sanction being added to incarceration on the basis of the socioeconomic status of the offender does not appear to have been conclusively validated. Tabular data are included.