Rape sentence length was once used as a proxy for authoritarian punitiveness.

Evidence

The “concern with sexual goings on” component of the authoritarian syndrome presents some measurement problems. Citing the “concern with overt sexuality” and “willingness to punish severely [any] violation of sexual norms” identified by the original authoritarianism researchers, Sales measured “punitiveness toward sexual criminals” (1973, pp. 49–50) by comparing the average length of sentence for persons convicted of rape (as reflecting judicial and indirectly reflecting societal punitiveness toward sexual criminals) with average sentences for voluntary manslaughter (as a control for punitiveness toward crime in general). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 802

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the operationalization of the ‘concern with sexual goings on’ component of authoritarianism via rape-vs-manslaughter sentence comparisons.
• XREF: connects to: Revised authoritarianism measures diluted the construct’s link to genocide. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 457