Free at Last? Judicial Discretion and Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing

Yang, Crystal

doi:10.1086/680989

Cited by 94 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Nevertheless, in these trio of studies the upward departure decision was one of multiple outcomes in single-level regressions and the authors did not spend too much space delving into the upward departure's importance in federal sentencing outcomes. 136 The earliest study utilized pre-Booker data and controlled only for sociodemographic characteristics. 137 The researcher's attention in the other two studies concerned Booker-based variations in sentencing outcomes more generally and the potential, more specifically, for courtroom disparities before and after Booker (finding greater disparity in upward departures post-Booker) 138 and racial disparities (finding greater racial disparities in upward departure decisions post-Booker).…”

Section: The Outcome Of Interest In Prior Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sentencing Disparities

Hamilton

2017

British Journal of American Legal Studies

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Criminal justice stakeholders are strongly concerned with disparities in penalty outcomes. Disparities are problematic when they represent unfounded differences in sentences, an abuse of discretion, and/or potential discrimination based on sociodemographic characteristics. The Article presents an original empirical study that explores disparities in sentences at two levels: the individual case level and the regional level. More specifically, the study investigates upward departures in the United States’ federal sentencing system, which constitutes a guidelines-based structure. Upward departures carry unique consequences to individuals and their effects on the system as they lead to lengthier sentences, symbolically represent a dispute with the guidelines advice, and contribute to mass incarceration. Upward departures are discretionary to district courts and thus may lead to disparities in sentencing in which otherwise seemingly like offenders receive dissimilar sentences, in part because of the tendency of their assigned judges to depart upward (or not). The study utilizes a multilevel mixed model to test the effects of a host of explanatory factors on the issuance of upward departures at the case level and whether those same factors are significant at the group level-i.e., district courts-to determine the extent of variation across districts. The explanatory variables tested include legal factors (e.g., final offense level, criminal history, offense type), extralegal characteristics (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, citizenship), and case-processing variables (e.g., trial penalty, custody status). The results indicate that various legal and nonlegal factors are relevant in individual cases (representing individual differences) and signify that significant variations across district courts exist (confirming regional disparities). Implications of the significant findings for the justice system are explored.

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Section: The Outcome Of Interest In Prior Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sentencing Disparities

Hamilton

2017

British Journal of American Legal Studies

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“…In model 4, the "sleepy Monday" coefficient is approximately zero. This conclusion is robust to variations of the model, including the use of raw sentence length or a binary imprisonment indicator as dependent variable, or the samples of models 2, 3, or 5; model 6 shows an example using Yang's (2015) approach.…”

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confidence: 83%

“…Black)." regression setup of Yang (2015), which uses more data while being more robust. 5 This shrinks the standard error by an additional 25%, but also shrinks the coefficient by an additional 40%, such that the p-value rises to .16.…”

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confidence: 99%

Are Sleepy Punishers Really Harsh Punishers?: Comment

Spamann¹

2017

SSRN Journal

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“…More recent scholarship, in which nuanced and contextual factors are taken into account, has resulted in demonstrating racially disparate handling of cases in some jurisdictions but not in others (Engen and Steen, ) and that differences, at times, appear at different points in the processing of cases from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (Crutchfield, Fernandes, and Martinez, ; Ulmer and Johnson, ). Researchers also have found that racial differences in sentencing can be observed in some jurisdictions (Yang, ) while not in others (Kautt, ; Ulmer, ) but that, in some cases of the latter, processing decisions prior to sentencing can lead to the appearance of fairness late in the process while masking important race differentials (Ulmer, Painter‐Davis, and Tinik, ).…”

Section: Fifty Years Later: the Commission's Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race, Crime, and Criminal Justice

Fernandes

Crutchfield

2018

Criminology & Public Policy

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Fifty years ago, the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under PresidentJohnson did not frequently mention race and ethnicity in its discussion of and recommendations for the criminal justice system, but it did have a lot to say about race and crime. Through the use of arrest rates to measure racial differentials in criminal involvement, the Commission concluded that Blacks commit more crime as a consequence of Black people living in greater numbers in criminogenic "slum" conditions. To address racial differences, the Commission favored the Great Society programs of Johnson's War on Poverty. Contemporary criminologists continue to debate the racial distribution of crime, the causes of crimes, and the best policies to reduce crime and racial differentials. The Commission did not anticipate the current debate among scholars regarding how much racial disproportionality exists in the criminal justice system and its causes and consequences. The policies that led to mass incarceration have been significant drivers of continued criminal justice racial disparity. Those policies are inconsistent with the recommendation in The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967), upending the pursuit of a more fair and just system.

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Free at Last? Judicial Discretion and Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing

Cited by 94 publications

References 24 publications

Sentencing Disparities

Sentencing Disparities

Are Sleepy Punishers Really Harsh Punishers?: Comment

Race, Crime, and Criminal Justice

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