Over our next five blog posts, we will highlight selected preliminary findings from our work surveying members of the New Jersey public on their support across different areas of sentencing reform in the state. The first area concerns the public’s support for the creation of a new mitigating sentencing factor for defendants who are survivors of abuse by their victims.
A judge must consider several statutorily defined aggravating and mitigating factors during sentencing under New Jersey state law. The New Jersey Sentencing Commission recommended that the legislature create a new mitigating factor that allows judges to consider a defendant’s prior abuse if it was perpetrated by the victim of the crime for which the defendant is being sentenced, stemming from extensive research focused on the impact of abuse on character and conduct. The New Jersey Department of Corrections studied the inmate population in the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, the largest female prison in the state, and found that approximately 72% of the female inmates who were first-time offenders and convicted of a violent crime were abused by the victim of the crime for which they had been charged and sentenced.[1]
In 2024, a bill was introduced in the New Jersey Assembly that proposes the potential statutory addition of a mitigating factor for judges to use in sentencing: “The defendant suffered physical, sexual, or emotional abuse and such abuse was a contributing factor to the defendant’s criminal behavior.” In response, the Commission has recommended the bill’s adoption but suggests that there be changes to the language of the factor: “The defendant suffered physical, sexual, or emotional abuse which was inflicted by the victim of the crime.” The Commission is concerned that the expansive language as currently written could potentially weaken the intended effects of this mitigating factor, making it less powerful for those defendants to whom the Commission envisioned it applying. This legislation is still currently making its way through the legislature.
For our study, we presented a summary of a real-life criminal case (State v. Briggs, 2022) in New Jersey to a sample of 1,529 adults who live in the state, in which a woman killed her ex-husband after years of abuse. In this real case, she was sentenced to 18 years in prison. The Commission has used this case in its discussions about the need for and development of the mitigating factor described here.
We first wanted to know whether members of the New Jersey public generally supported the use and availability of a new mitigating factor for cases like the one they read about, in which defendants who are survivors of abuse by their victims are being sentenced in New Jersey. On a scale of 1 to 4 to 7 (from not at all support to neutral to completely support), we found that on average, participants were generally in favor of this sentencing reform (M = 5.02; SD = 1.51). We found a significant association between participants’ general philosophy that sentencing should be rehabilitative-focused and their increased support for this mitigating factor. Older participants and those with more utilitarian punishment philosophies toward sentencing were significantly less likely to support this mitigating factor. At the same time, females and those with graduate degrees were significantly more likely to support it.
We also wanted to know if the wording of the mitigating factor affected New Jersey public support; thus, we manipulated this by presenting half the research sample with the wording of the mitigating factor recommended by the Commission (underlined above) and half the sample with the current wording in the bill presented to the New Jersey Assembly (bolded above). We found no statistical differences in the public levels of support for the use and availability of the factor, or how much of the defendant’s sentence participants said should be mitigated based on the use of that factor, regardless of the wording provided. On average, participants said that the defendant’s 18-year sentence should be mitigated by almost 10 years (SD = 4.87) based on her background of abuse and by applying this factor to her case.
Overall, these preliminary results suggest fairly strong public support for the creation of a new mitigating sentencing factor for defendants who are survivors of abuse by their victims in the state of New Jersey.
References:
[1] New Jersey Criminal Sentencing & Disposition Commission, March 2023 Report. https://pub.njleg.gov/publications/reports/CSDC%20Third%20Report.pdf