Experiences in Criminal Court among Jailed Defendants

• In Event: Legal Services for the Indigent: Client Experiences

Abstract

Prior research has demonstrated that defendants’ satisfaction with case outcomes and court processing can be predicted by measurements of defendant perceptions of procedural justice (also referred to as procedural fairness). In some studies, perceived fairness was found to be more predictive of defendant satisfaction than the disposition or sentence. One caveat to this prior work is the almost exclusive use of close-ended surveys to measure defendant perceptions, which may limit researchers’ ability to fully capture the factors that most influenced how defendants perceived their experiences. The current study utilized intensive interviews to develop a more in-depth understanding of how defendants developed perceptions of their court experiences and of which factors most influenced defendant satisfaction with case outcomes and case processing. Sampled defendants were all sentenced to serve time in a local jail by a criminal court in a county in the Northeast. The results and conclusions of this study will be discussed, along with implications for methodological choices in future research.

Author

• Kirstin A. Morgan, Appalachian State University