The Multilevel Context of Criminal Sentencing: Integrating Judge- And County-Level Influences*

Abstract

This study extends recent inquiries of contextual effects in sentencing by jointly examining the influence of judge and courtroom social contexts. It combines two recent years of individual sentencing data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) with data on judicial background characteristics and county court social contexts. Three‐level hierarchical models are estimated to investigate the influence of judge and county contexts on individual variations in sentencing. Results indicate that nontrivial sentencing variations are associated with both individual judge characteristics and county court contexts. Judicial background factors also condition the influence of individual offender characteristics in important ways. These and other findings are discussed in relation to contemporary theoretical perspectives on courtroom decision making that highlight the importance of both judge and court contexts in sentencing. The study concludes with suggestions for future research on contextual disparities in criminal sentencing.

Let My People Go: Ethnic In-Group Bias in Judicial Decisions - Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment

“…They are contrary to the findings of Uhlman (1978), Spohn (1990b), and Steffensmeier and Britt (2001), but conform to the findings of Welch et al (1988), and particularly Johnson (2006) who found that minority judges are less likely to incarcerate black and Hispanic offenders, yet found no difference in the length of sentences. Our findings also coincide with Abrams et al (2008) who found statistically significant between-judge variation (yet not specifically across judge's ethnic identity) in incarceration rates, although not in sentence lengths.…”

“…How should we account for the evidence for ethnic in-group bias in the decision to release or detain, and the lack of such bias in the decision on the length of detention, which also mirrors similar findings in the context of sentencing (Johnson 2006, Abrams et al 2008)? The main difference between these two decisions is in the characteristic of the response alternatives -release or detain, as opposed to a range of detention lengths of from one to fifteen days.…”

“…Since detention length models include only those cases that were detained, the inverse Mills ratio is included as an additional predictor of detention length to correct for potential selection bias (Heckman 1979, Berk 1983). This variable was calculated using the Heckman two-step procedure in Stata 9, and was added to the multilevel linear model (see : Johnson 2006). The analyses begin by estimating unconditional models that estimate the relative amount of variation at the decision and judge the estimate of the randomly assigned causal effect -in our case the ethnic identity of the judge (see : King 1991: King , pp.…”

“…On the one hand, Welch et al (1988) found that black judges treated black defendants more equally compared to white judges in the decision to incarcerate, and Johnson (2006) found that minority judges were less likely to incarcerate black and Hispanic offenders, but found no difference in the length of sentences. Fishman et al This study differs from earlier works in three main respects, which together create a uniquely effective method of isolating judicial bias from other ethnicity related factors.…”

Statistical Inference After Model Selection

“…Determinants of post-conviction sentences have long been of interest to criminologists and to researchers from other disciplines who study sanctions (Blumstein et al, 1983;Wooldredge, 2005;Johnson, 2006). Probation decisions have received considerable attention (Morris and Tonry, 1980;Petersilia, 1997).…”