Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:21:56.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Holistic Effects in Social Control Decision-Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Robert M. Emerson
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Most research on social control decision-making takes the individual case as the sole unit for the analysis of decision outcomes. Yet under a variety of organizational circumstances, social control agents process and respond to cases in relation to, or as part of, some larger, organizationally determined whole. This paper identifies three such larger units of cases found in social control decision-making—case sets, caseloads, and collections of cases grouped by the demands of establishing precedent and consistency—and suggests conditions which increase and decrease the effects of such holistic units on decisions made in particular cases.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , 1983 , pp. 425 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

*

I wish to acknowledge the thoughtful comments and criticisms of the various drafts this paper has gone through provided by the following people: Daniel Glaser, James Holstein, Jack Katz, Sheldon L. Messinger, Mark Peyrot, Melvin Pollner, and Carol A.B. Warren. Richard O. Lempert deserves a special note of thanks for his extremely careful and sensitive editorial revisions.

References

BAKWIN, Harry (1945) “Pseudodoxia Pediatrica,” 232 New England Journal of Medicine 691.Google Scholar
BITTNER, Egon (1967) “The Police on Skid-Row: A Study of Peace-Keeping,” 32 American Sociological Review 699.Google Scholar
BLOOR, Michael (1976) “Bishop Berkeley and the Adenotonsillectomy Enigma: An Exploration of Variation in the Social Construction of Medical Disposals,” 10 Sociology 43.Google Scholar
BORTNER, M.A. (1982) Inside a Juvenile Court: The Tarnished Ideal of Individualized Justice, New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
BRICKEY, Stephen L. and Dan E., MILLER (1975) “Bureaucratic Due Process: An Ethnography of a Traffic Court,” 22 Social Problems 688.Google Scholar
BUCKHOLDT, David R. and Jaber F., GUBRIUM (1979) Caretakers: Treating Emotionally Disturbed Children. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
COLE, George F. (1970) “The Decision to Prosecute,” 4 Law & Society Review 331.Google Scholar
DANIELS, Arlene K. (1970) “The Social Construction of Military Psychiatric Diagnoses,” in Dreitzel, H. (ed.), Recent Sociology No. 2: Patterns of Communicative Behavior. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
DURKHEIM, Emile (1938) The Rules of Sociological Method. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
EMERSON, Robert M. (1969) Judging Delinquents: Context and Process in Juvenile Court. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
EMERSON, Robert M. (1974) “Role Determinants in Juvenile Court,” in Glaser, D. (ed.), Handbook of Criminology. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Glaser, D. (1981) “On Last Resorts,” 87 American Journal of Sociology 1.Google Scholar
EMERSON, Robert M. and Melvin, POLLNER (1976) “Dirty Work Designations: Their Features and Consequences in a Psychiatric Setting,” 23 Social Problems 243.Google Scholar
FEELEY, Malcolm M. (1979) The Process is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
FOOTE, Caleb (1972) “The Sentencing Function,” in Annual Chief Justice Warren Conference on Advocacy in the United States, A Program For Prison Reform: The Final Report. Cambridge, MA: The Roscoe Pound-American Trial Lawyers Foundation.Google Scholar
FREIDSON, Eliot (1970) Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
GARFINKEL, Harold (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
GLASER, Daniel (n.d.) “Compulsive Proportioning of Precaution: Conservatism and Subcultural Base-Rate Formation in Case Decisions of Criminal Justice and Other Organizations.” Unpublished paper, Department of Sociology, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
HEUMANN, Milton (1978) Plea Bargaining: The Experiences of Prosecutors, Judges, and Defense Attorneys. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
HUGHES, Everett C. (1971) The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
LEVY, Gerald E. (1970) Ghetto School: Class Warfare in an Elementary School. New York: Pegasus.Google Scholar
LIPSKY, Michael (1980) Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
MARCH, James G. and Herbert A., SIMON (1958) Organizations. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
MAYNARD, Douglas W. (1982) “Defendant Attributes in Plea Bargaining: Notes on the Modeling of Sentencing Decisions,” 29 Social Problems 347.Google Scholar
McCLEARY, Richard (1975) “How Structural Variables Constrain the Parole Officer's Use of Discretionary Powers,” 23 Social Problems 209.Google Scholar
McCLEARY, Richard (1977) “How Parole Officers Use Records,” 24 Social Problems 576.Google Scholar
McCLEARY, Richard (1978) Dangerous Men: The Sociology of Parole. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
McCLEARY, Richard, O'NEIL, Michael J., Thomas, EPPERLEIN, Constance, JONES and Ronald H., GRAY (1981) “Effects of Legal Education and Work Experience on Perceptions of Crime Seriousness,” 28 Social Problems 276.Google Scholar
MENDEL, Werner M. and Samuel, RAPPORT (1973) “Determinants of the Decision for Psychiatric Hospitalization,” in Price, R. and Denner, B. (eds.), The Making of a Mental Patient. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
PARDUCCI, Allen (1968) “The Relativism of Absolute Judgments,” 219 Scientific American 84 (December).Google Scholar
PETERSON, David M. (1971) “Informal Norms and Police Practice: The Traffic Ticket Quota System,” 55 Sociology and Social Research 354.Google Scholar
PEYROT, Mark (1982) “Caseload Management: Choosing Suitable Clients in a Community Mental Health Clinic Agency,” 30 Social Problems 157.Google Scholar
POLLNER, Melvin (1979) “Explicative Transactions: Making and Managing Meaning in Traffic Court,” in Psathas, G. (ed.), Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology. New York: Irvington. (Unpublished version, Department of Sociology, ULCA, 1977.).Google Scholar
PRUS, Robert C. and J., STRATTON (1976) “Parole Revocation Decisionmaking: Private Typings and Official Designations,” 40 Federal Probation 48 (March).Google Scholar
ROSETT, Arthur and Donald R., CRESSEY (1976), Justice by Consent: Plea Bargains in the American Courthouse. Philadelphia: Lippincott.Google Scholar
RUBINSTEIN, Jonathan (1973) City Police. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
SANDERS, William B. (1977) Detective Work: A Study of Criminal Investigations. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
SCHUTZ, Alfred (1964) Collected Papers, Vol. II: Studies in Social Theory. ed. Natanson, Maurice. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SKOLNICK, Jerome H. (1966) Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
STEBBINS, Robert A. (1975) Teachers and Meaning: Definitions of Classroom Situations. Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
STUDT, Elliot (1972) Surveillance and Service in Parole: A Report of the Parole Action Study. Los Angeles: Institute of Government and Public Affairs, UCLA.Google Scholar
SUDNOW, David (1965) “Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender Office,” 12 Social Problems 255.Google Scholar
SUDNOW, David (1967) Passing On: The Social Organization of Dying. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
WAEGEL, William B. (1981) “Case Routinization in Investigative Police Work,” 28 Social Problems 263.Google Scholar
ZIMMERMAN, Don H. (1970) “The Practicalities of Rule Use,” in Douglas, J. (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
ZIMMERMAN, Don H. and Melvin, POLLNER (1970) “The Everyday World as a Phenomenon,” in Douglas, J. (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar