Sex-crime sentences lengthened during low-threat years, contrary to threat theory.

Evidence

With these differences in mind, we attempted to replicate Sales’s measure by using yearly data from Michigan Department of Corrections records (1978–1988) on the distribution of minimum terms for first-degree criminal sexual conduct and (as a control) for manslaughter, grouped into the two categories of 5 years or less and longer than 5 years. Results were in the direction opposite to those of Sales. Minimum sentences for first-degree criminal sexual conduct were significantly longer during the low-threat years than during the high-threat years (75% of 1,080 cases for 1983–1987 for longer than 5 years vs. 62% of 854 cases for 1978–1982), t(8)=3.91, p<.01, whereas there was only a nonsignificant increase in length of sentence for manslaughter (48% of minimum sentences longer than 5 years for 1983–1987 vs. 43% for 1978–1982), t(8)=1.32, p=ns. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 804

Categorization

• XREF: Directly complicates the classic threat/authoritarianism finding from earlier in this same book (Sales’s original result) — a clean empirical reversal.