Discretion and Disparity under Sentencing Guidelines Revisited: The Interrelationship between Structured Sentencing Alternatives and Guideline Decision-making

Abstract

Objectives: We argue that the reasons court actors conform to or depart from sentencing guideline recommendations likely vary depending on whether the decision involves an alternative sanction or incarceration and that these reasons may have consequences for ethnoracial disparities in the sentencing of defendants and how these disparities are understood. Method: We use recent (2012–2016) Pennsylvania sentencing data to examine (1) the relationship between defendant race/ethnicity and court actors’ decisions to depart downward and upward from the guidelines and (2) whether such relationships vary depending on whether they involve an alternative sanction, namely intermediate punishments (IPs). Results: We find that the association of defendant race/ethnicity with decisions to conform to the guidelines or to depart is greatly impacted by whether the sentence involves an IP. Blacks and, to a lesser extent, Latinos experienced greater disadvantage in guideline decision-making, whether conformity or departures, when the sentence involved an IP. Conclusions: Results suggest that the integration of IP into guideline systems may have (1) mobilized ethnoracial disparities in sentencing, (2) focused the location of sentencing disparities to sentences involving IP, and (3) changed the applicability of common interpretations of guideline decisions and disparities in their imposition.

Individual characteristics and community context in decisions to divert or arrest

“…These relationships are persistent across both adult (Bontrager et al, 2005; Johnson & DiPietro, 2012; Painter‐Davis & Ulmer, 2020; Schlesinger, 2013) and juvenile populations (Anderson, 2015; Armstrong & Rodriguez, 2005; Caudill et al, 2013; Cochran & Mears, 2015; Maggard, 2015; Rodriguez, 2013) and are particularly salient for earlier decision points, such as diversion (Claus et al, 2017). In a systematic review of the literature on race and the punishment of juvenile offenders, Engen et al (2002) found evidence of an impact of race across multiple studies, and in particular, that these effects were stronger in studies that examined earlier decision points in the justice process, such as arrest.…”

The Black Effect: Reimagining Racial Threat Through a Black Absolute Status Lens

“…Second, only felony offenses were included in the analysis. Following prior research, only the most severe offense committed by an offender within a judicial proceeding is included in the analysis (Cassidy & Rydberg, 2019; Painter-Davis & Ulmer, 2019; Steffensmeier et al, 2017). Finally, cases missing information on key variables were also excluded from the analyses (3.8%).…”

Going Off the Grid: Assessing Sentencing Departures for Individuals Convicted of Sexual Offenses

“…2. Recent work utilizing the PCS data has opted to control for the presumptive sentence length rather than the offense gravity score because the former produced less multicollinearity (Steffensmeier et al, 2017;Painter-Davis & Ulmer, 2020).…”