The final settlements of criminal cases may be divided into those that involved imprisonment and those that did not. Of those involving imprisonment a further division may be made into (1) shorter imprisonment, usually in minimum or medium custody institutions, and (2) longer imprisonment, usually in maximum or medium custody institutions. For practical purposes we may consider all misdemeanors resulting in imprisonment as constituting category (1), and all felonies resulting in imprisonment as category (2).

The question of imprisonment rather than the question of whether the offense was a misdemeanor or felony is the important one. A man convicted of either may go free unconditionally, as in the case of payment of fine or suspended sentence, or conditionally, as in the case of probation. Misdemeanors may involve periods of incarceration up to one year, or longer if a fine is paid in time rather than money. Misdemeanors are usually defined as lesser offenses which do not deprive the subject of civil rights and which normally draw sentences of one year or less. Felonies, on the other hand, do deprive one of certain rights and sentences usually start at one year and one day. There are jurisdictions where a two-year sentence for a felony involves a shorter period in an institution than two one-year misdemeanor sentences to be served consecutively—i.e., the beginning of one sentence at the expiration of the other. This is due to the availability of parole and more liberal «good time» allowances for felons.

With these and previous cautions in mind, the picture of convictions that involved no period of incarceration (usually because a fine was paid), convictions for misdemeanors, and convictions for felonies is as follows.

Usually convictions for all the sex-offense groups and the prison group meant a term in prison. The proportion of convictions disposed of without imprisonment ranges from 13 per cent to 33 per cent, with the majority of groups (including the prison) within a 14 to 20 per cent spread. The only offenders to exceed 23 per cent are the homosexual offenders vs. adults, whose convictions without imprisonment are numerically as important as their misdemeanors and felonies with imprisonment.

A wider range is found for misdemeanors that did result in imprisonment: from 25 to 62 per cent of the convictions among the various groups were of this type, with the prison group in fourth place. No particular trends or clusterings are evident except that the groups whose sex offenses did not involve physical contact (peepers and exhibitionists) or whose contact was with willing postpubertal females (offenders vs. minors and adults) had the largest percentages. In brief, the offenses deemed less harmful were more often treated as misdemeanors.

Felony convictions with imprisonment constitute roughly from one quarter to one half of all the convictions. The prison group stands more or less midway with 34 per cent. The four sex-offender groups who were high in misdemeanors were, naturally, low in terms of felony convictions (24—27 per cent). For all other sex offenders, except the homosexual offenders vs. adults, from 44 to 55 per cent of the felony convictions brought imprisonment.

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