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Using a sample of 467 sexual assault cases, this study analyzes the role of prior relationship and "negative" victim characteristics in accounting for case outcomes from prosecutorial intake to final disposition. Neither of these variables played a role in either the decision to prosecute, the decision to go to trial rather than resolve by guilty plea, trial outcomes, or punishment severity as indicated by a prison (versus nonprison) term. Both variables, however, were significant in determining sentence length. When selection bias and relevant legal factors were controlled, the existence of a prior relationship reduced sentence length by 35 months; each additional negative victim characteristic reduced the period of incarceration by 17 months.
Theories of criminal justice processing are customarily classified according to the images of social order they embrace and, by derivation, the variables they emphasize to explain case decisionmaking (Akers '1994; Hagan 1989; Neubauer 1996; Void, Bernard, and Snipes 1998). Theorists in the consensus tradition assume normative consensus, and argue accordingly that official decisions are governed by legally relevant variables such as crime severity, the offender's prior record, and evidentiary considerations. In this view, extralegal variables such as race, class, and gender are assigned only a minimal role in predicting case outcomes. Conflict theorists, on the other hand, view social conflict as endemic, and emphasize the role of criminal justice institutions in maintaining and perpetuating the social stratification system. Although conflict theorists generally concede the importance of legal variables, they attribute a substantial residual variance to the impact of extralegal variables, particularly class, race, and gender.
Reflecting the roots of the conflict perspective in Marxist thought, early formulations (e.g., Chambliss and Seidman 1971; Quinney 1970) emphasized the role of the criminal justice system in expressing and enforcing social relations based on class interest. Because of increasing recognition that this conceptualization could not encompass relations based on race and ethnicity, the conflict perspective was elaborated in the 1970s and 1980s (Hagan and Bumiller 1983; Hawkins 1987).
Surprisingly, when we consider the centrality of power to the theoretical scheme, conflict theorists were slow to recognize connections between the criminal justice system and gender. Moyer (1992) attributes this tardiness to male domination of the criminological profession, and argues that women, both as activists and as intellectuals,...