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THE TIMING OF COURT PROCESSING: TOWARDS LINKING THEORY AND METHOD *
Author(s) -
ZATZ MAJORIE S.,
LIZOTTE ALAN J.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-9125.1985.tb00339.x
Subject(s) - plea , traverse , criminal justice , focus (optics) , economic justice , psychology , computer science , law , criminology , political science , geography , physics , geodesy , optics
The time required for a case to traverse the criminal justice system is of central importance to participants. Time translates into issues of efficiency and is likely to be closely related to the cost of a case. The role of time has, however, largely been ignored in studies of court processing, though it has a history in the sociology of law. This research uses event‐history data from California to model the effects of offense, offender, and processing factors on the time it takes to move a case from entrance into the system at arrest to disposition by guilty plea or trial. A model that mirrors the dynamics of case processing is used to assess the dependencies of inertial forces on case and defendant characteristics This focus on the processing time to each of the potential outcomes allows for the linking of theories and methods of processing.