Of punishment and parenthood: The relationship between family-based social control and sentencing

This research explores answers to the questions, "Do black men and women drug offenders receive similar sentences?" and "Are the predictors of sentencing similar in type and magnitude for black women and men?" One of the major tenets of Donald Black's theory of the sociology of law is that informal social control varies inversely with formal social control. Black's theory was extended to consider the role of two types of family-based informal social control prevalent in the lives of black women and men: child-based social control and kin-based social control. Offenders who live with children were expected to be sentenced less severely than those who do not. Also, the influence of child-based social control was predicted to be greater for women than for men because women's lives are more constricted by caring for children than are their male parent counterparts. These predictions were tested using 1991-1993 data for 3,444 black men and 712 black women convicted of cocaine offenses in the District of Columbia's Superior Court. Regressions models containing key legal and extralegal characteristics were estimated for men and women combined, and separately. Kin-based social control was not found to be an important predictor of sentence. The child-based factors influenced sentence severity for women but not for men. The findings suggest that women offenders benefit from having their child care responsibilities taken into account in a way that men offenders do not. However, the consideration of child care responsibilities is not extended to women who do not live with their children; these women are sentenced more severely than other women. This study concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for sentencing policy and future theory development.