Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: ABSTRACT: Sexual assault cases are unique within the trial court systems, and judges and juries are faced with an array of different scenarios to which they are required to make fair, justifiable and consistent decisions. We examine child sexual assault cases of Dallas County 1999-2005 and examine both legal and extralegal factors including case characteristics, institutional characteristics, and characteristics of the defendants and the victims. We examine the impact of the independent variables on sentence length using regression analysis to determine influences on sentencing for judges and juries. We find that neo-institutional models assist with explaining differences between judge and jury sentencing in sexual violence cases after controlling for several key case characteristics. Victim proximity to the defendant in terms of their relationship reveals that biological fathers and other relatives receive lesser sentences. Moreover, gender of both the judge and the victim matter. Defendants who attack male victims receive heavier sentences despite the gender neutral language of the statute, and female judges sentence defendants more harshly than their male counterparts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The last several years has seen a growing consensus among scholars and policy makers that the most pressing environmental problems are global in reach. Yet as international attempts to address climate change and other global environmental issues meet with limited success, it is local governments that are enacting many of today’s most far-reaching sustainability efforts. Though the claim that there is an intimate relationship between cities and non-human nature is nothing new, what is striking is the extent to which policy makers and members of civil society are rejecting the long-held view that cities are the cause of environmental ills and instead are lauding them as holding the key to environmental progress. This paper examines how and why cities, particularly those in post-industrial countries, have come to embrace sustainability with such enthusiasm. It is argued that city environmental efforts are a multi-scalar and multi-faceted phenomenon that is a confluence of the competitive pressures of the globalized economy, the embrace by city leaders of the premise of ecological modernization that environmental protection and economic growth are compatible, and challenges to the dominant norm of ecological modernization emerging from activists making non-market based calls for environmental and social change. Furthermore, understanding the historical and political process by which environmental norms have come to be adopted and the structural factors that have influenced the direction of these efforts is crucial for understanding the possibility of creating just sustainability within the current global political and economic order.