ABSTRACT
Drawing from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, a substantive body of knowledge about the social organization of criminal sentencing has evolved. However, the empirical research on criminal sentencing has not produced an agreed-upon theory of criminal sentencing processes or a widely accepted set of determinants of sentencing outcomes. Using the current perspectives on sentencing, the author appraises three theories that purport to explain the determinants of sentencing outcomes. Because most theories of sentencing are general, they make the assumption that there is a unitary sentencing system in all courts. According to the formal legal approach, the organization of bureaucratic and legal decision making is perceived as a technically rational machine. Claiming that political and organizational maintenance goals are simultaneously operating to displace formal legal rationality, some maintain that politics are institutionalized in organizational practices. Taken alone, none of these sentencing theories can fully explain variations in sentencing across courts.
