Ethnicity, legal resources, and felony dispositions in two southwestern jurisdictions

Despite extensive research on differential justice, only a few studies have examined the dispositions of southwestern Hispanics. Hispanic defendants' ability to acquire legal resources—representation by private counsel and pretrial release—remains virtually unstudied. Our research extends knowledge in this area by examining the relationships of ethnicity and employment status to private counsel, pretrial release, and sentence severity in Bexar County and El Paso County, Texas. The legal resource and sentence severity variables were analyzed sequentially, approximating the relevant stages of criminal justice decision making. Examination of the legal resource effects in the two jurisdictions reveals that ethnicity and employment exerted indirect influences on sentence severity through the private attorney and bail variables; ethnicity also directly affected sentence severity in El Paso County. The findings show that ethnic minorities and the unemployed were disadvantaged in the sentencing process.