Type of Document	Dissertation
Author	Hughes, Cynthia Caravelis
URN	etd-10122007-153256
Title	A Study of Social Control in Florida: The Impact of Race and Ethnicity on the Designation of Individuals as Habitual or Career Offenders
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy
Department	Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Ted Chiricos Committee Chair Joyce Carbonell Committee Member William Bales Committee Member
Keywords	Social Control Career Offenders Social Threat Habitual Offenders Sentencing Race
Date of Defense	2007-09-17
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract The United States criminal justice system has continued along a path of punitive policies and practices that began in the 1980s. These punitive measures include both the expansion of existing enhancements, such as Habitual Offender laws, as well as new initiatives, such as the Florida Career Offender Registration Act. In the State of Florida, both laws allow for the application of enhanced sentences to defendants who are designated as either “Habitual Offenders” or “Career Offenders.” The application of these laws is completely discretionary and as such, state prosecutors seek the designations for only a fraction of the defendants who qualify. Utilizing Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling, this study examines whether individual attributes, such as race and ethnicity, impact an individual’s likelihood of receiving either the Habitual or Career Offender designation. Additionally, the second level of analysis incorporates county level characteristics into the equation and tests whether these characteristics have either a direct or a cross level effect on the relationship between race, ethnicity and the likelihood that an individual will receives one of the designations. Situational threat is examined as a context for individual level effects in the form of both crime types and specific crime categories. The broad theoretical framework that guides the research is grounded in the social threat and social control perspective. For the Habitual Offender outcome, results indicate that both black and Hispanic defendants have significantly higher odds of being Habitualized when compared to white defendants with similar personal characteristics and legal attributes. The race and ethnicity effect on the Habitual Offender outcome is more prominent for drug offenders and in counties with a higher number of cases per judge, higher drug arrest rate and a higher violent crime rate. Results for the Career Offender sample indicate that both black and Hispanic defendants have significantly lower odds of receiving the Career Offender designation than similarly situated white defendants. Defendants who went to trial and those accused of violent offenses are the most likely to be sentenced as a Career Offender as are defendants sentenced in counties with a higher number of cases per judge and a higher percent of Hispanic residents.
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