KEYWORDS: racial disparities in punishment, drug offenders, stereotypingIn this paper we argue that the meaning of race in criminal justice decision making will vary depending on other offender and offense characteristics, and that differences in treatment within races may therefore be as large as differences between races. We find that, among adult drug offenders from Washington State, those white offenders who most closely resemble the stereotype of a dangerous drug offender receive significantly harsher treatment than other white offending groups, while among black offenders, it is the defendants who least resemble a dangerous drug offender who receive substantially different-in this case, less punitive-treatment than other black offenders. That is, the exceptions are made for the most serious and the least serious offenders. We discuss the implications of these findings.

Studies of sentencing in jurisdictions with sentencing guidelines have generally failed to specify adequately the effects of offense seriousness and criminal history—the principal factors that, by law, should determine sentencing decisions. As a result, the explanatory power of those models is seriously limited, and regression coefficients representing both legal and extralegal factors may be biased. We present an alternative approach to specify more precisely the effects of legally relevant factors on sentencing outcomes and test the approach using felony sentencing data from Washington State. We find that controlling for the presumptive sentence substantially improves the fit and explanatory power of models predicting sentencing decisions, and that the estimated effects of extralegal factors, specifically sex and race, reduce considerably. The findings have both substantive and methodological implications.

This article examines the use of alternative sentencing provisions as mechanisms for departing from sentencing guidelines in Washington State and as structural sources of unwarranted sentencing disparity. The authors argue that these structural features of guidelines not only serve as “windows of discretion” through which disparities arise, but they also may encourage disparities by requiring consideration of substantive criteria that disadvantage certain offender groups. The analyses find that males and minority offenders are less likely to receive alternative sentences below the standard range, but that race‐ethnicity and gender have inconsistent effects on departures above the standard range. Theoretical implications of the study are discussed.

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