【正文】 of how much sentencers attend to legally defined, justifiable or legitimized factors, and how much they attend to offender characteristics such as gender and social class. Attention to offender characteristics is not prescribed in formal law, and while normally referred to as extralegal variables, they also have been called legallyirrelevant Although there is contradictory evidence about the exact influence of extralegal offender characteristics (Hagan and Bumiller, 1983), there are sufficient indications of their intrusions into sentencing deliberations to warrant continued public concern and thorough empirical investigation. Even after the introduction of the influential Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines, Miethe and Moore (1985) and Moore and Miethe (1986) found that gender, employment, and educational levels had a major impact on prison sentences. Sentencers adjusted guideline penalties to fit their sentencing philosophies. The pressing research issue is to determine how much differences in penalties are influenced by sentencers39。 unwarranted, legally irrelevant discriminations between offenders, as opposed to their appropriate attention to legally relevant case de tails. Campaigns to reduce drinking provide a unique opportunity for analyzing how justice is dispensed, since sentencing outes and the sentencer39。s contribution 蘭州理工大學(xué)人文學(xué)院畢業(yè)論文 22 can be specified in ways not normally achievable in criminological research, and since offenders include many persons of good character who normally would not appear in court (Homel, 1988。 Wood, 1990). Australian state parliaments have responded to the social cost of drinking and driving by tying penalties to graded levels of offenses defined by binations of blood alcohol levels and recidivism, and this action automatically limits magistrates39。 discretionary powers. Consequently, the scope of individual sentencers39。 deliberations is constrained by circumscribed ranges of penalties, at the same time that they are informed by public and media attention to the road toll (Homel, 1990). In such a situation, it is possible to investigate how magistrates apply their perspectives to the fundamental case information specified by the legislation, in relation to other information about offenders appearing before them. An effective strategy for understanding sentencing behaviors involves analyzing how sentencer and case factors interact (Hagan, 1975。 Hogarth, 1971. McFatter, 1986), although analytic procedures for encapsulating these interactions are no simpler than the explanations they seek to supply. For example, Grossman (1966), Green (1961), and Hood and Sparks (1970) agree about the futility of seeking onetoone associations between a judge39。s background and the judicial decisions he or she produces. Different sentencer factors will be considered relevant in any empirical analysis, depending on the researcher39。s interests and mitments, with consequent possibilities of variations in explanatory power. For instance, theoretical assumptions of stable personal traits and attitudes are likely to lead to analyses that do not look for intrasentencer variability in response to different contexts (Douglas, 1989。 McFatter, 1986). Although some notable studies have related sentencers39。 attitudes, goals, and role definitions to sentencing outes (., Gibson, 1978。 Hogarth, 1971。 Softley, 1980), there is limited value in attempting to predict penalties from sentencer factors, if sentencerrelated influences are not examined in terms of their responsiveness to the different configurations of case features such as the actual offense category under which an offense is classified (Douglas, 1989). Sentencer factors may be once removed from the courtroom task, and simply function as the backdrop to the sentencer39。s actual sentencing activities (Grossman, 1966。 Lawrence and Homel, 1987). The work of the sentencer is to select, weigh, and apply evidence to par ticular cases. Essentially, it is an information management activity and the sentencers39。 relevant activities involve their interpretive cognitive work (Maynard, 1982). Everything else to do with the sentencer provides the setting for that work. Expertise in managing information resides chiefly in professionals39。 abilities to pile and anize their knowledge and belief structures to allow them to construct working images or mental models of each new task (Chi et al., 1988。 JohnsonLaird, 1983). As experienced professionals approach a given task from the basis of accrued knowledge, they mentally construct their own working models or images, envisaging the elements and linkages involved in the task environment. Accumulated experience of simi lar tasks suggests reoccurring patterns of associations, so that fresh in stances can be interpreted against these 蘭州理工大學(xué)人文學(xué)院畢業(yè)論文 23 wellknown patterns and the internally constructed interpretations they suggest. Because drinkdriving cases are frequent in magistrates39。 courts, it is reasonable to expect that an experienced magistrate is able to call upon stored patterns of typical cases as the next case is presented in court, and of course, these stored patterns are influe nced by that magistrate39。s own attitudes and goals (Hogarth, 1971。 Lawrence, 1984). models, adding normative values and rules as well as affective markers to the knowledge used for interpreting information. Personal orientations and case information are brought together in the sentencer39。s mind,