Citation

Dahlstrom WG, Panton JH, Bain KP, Dahlstrom LE. Crim. Justice Behav. 1986; 13(1): 5-17.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1986, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0093854886013001001

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Panton (1978) examined 55 felons awaiting execution in North Carolina Central Prison before and after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the North Carolina death penalty unconstitutional. The interval between tests ranged from 6 to 49 months. Subsequently, these men were resentenced and reassigned in the prison system. Profiles from this serendipitous study were used to examine the usefulness of the Megargee-Bohn (M-B) classification system, which was derived from federal offenders, in evaluating felons in a state system who were tested under two quite dramatically different penal circumstances. Because capital offenses are a relatively rare occurrence in the federal prison system, it seemed important to know how well the M-B system covered profiles obtained from offenders in a state system found guilty of such charges (murder, rape, or first-degree burglary). The findings on this and related problems in the practical application of configural rules were encouraging in regard to reproducibility across workers and prison systems but less so in stability of type assignment.

Language: en