The race/sentencing literature has focused on imprisonment and sentence length decisions to the exclusion of other relevant outcomes. The present study extends this research by examining a previously overlooked decision—that is, the decision to deny federal offenders access to “good time” through sentencing. The current study uses data from the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC; fiscal years [FYs] 2010-2012) to examine the potential influence of race and ethnicity on this previously unstudied outcome. Results indicate that relative to White offenders, Latino and Native American offenders are more likely to be denied good-time access, while Asian offenders are less likely to be denied access. African American offenders are treated no differently than White offenders. Implications for research and practice are discussed in detail.

Racial and ethnic sentencing disparities are frequently conditioned by offender and case characteristics (e.g., gender, crime type). Offenders’ criminal history is a potentially important conditioning factor, yet this issue has only been addressed by a small body of research. Moreover, no study has examined this potential conditioning effect among Asian or Native American offenders, and prior research has typically adopted a limited theoretical approach for explaining why criminal history might condition racial disparities. The present study addresses these shortcomings in an analysis of United States Sentencing Commission data for fiscal years 2010-2012. Results indicate that race and ethnicity effects are conditioned by criminal history in important ways. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

Using a randomly assigned 2 (victim race) × 2 (alcohol consumption) between-subjects factorial design, this study used surveys from a sample of 571 undergraduate students at a mid-sized, public university in the United States to determine the effect of procedural justice on police referral after reading a sexual assault disclosure vignette. Multivariate binary logistic regression models demonstrated that positive perceptions of procedural justice increased police referral following sexual assault disclosure. Victim alcohol consumption and rape myth acceptance decreased police referral. Victim race, victim alcohol consumption, and participant sex did not moderate the effect of procedural justice on police referral. Implications are discussed.

This study examines the influence of DNA evidence on prosecutorial decisions in sexual assault cases. Thirty-eight prosecutors experienced with prosecuting sexual violence cases were surveyed regarding the use of biological evidence in sexual assault cases, including the ways in which it is generally used, the cases in which it is most critical to have, and factors impacting case attrition. Results indicate that prosecutors perceive DNA evidence to be extremely valuable in prosecuting sexual assault cases. Several themes related to the perspective, context, process, and conditions under which DNA evidence plays a vital role in sexual assault case processing are identified.

The sentencing literature is replete with studies that have examined the influence of extralegal offender characteristics on two key sentence outcomes: the imprisonment and sentence length decisions. Yet the study of other outcomes, such as the application of intermediate sanctions, is rarely addressed. To date, no studies have been conducted in the federal courts to examine the potential influence of race/ethnicity, age, gender, and educational attainment on the decision to apply intermediate sanctions. Consequently, the present analysis employs U.S. Sentencing Commission data to examine direct and interactive effects of these extralegal characteristics on this understudied outcome. Findings indicate that extralegal effects may play an important role in the use of intermediate sanctions. The implications of this research are discussed in detail.