Modeling the Politics of Punishment: A Contextual Analysis of Racial Disparity in Drug Sentencing

Abstract

This study uses Tobit to assess contextual punishment determinants for a large sample of felony drug cases that reached final disposition in 1990. After statistically holding constant ascribed and legal variables, the authors find that punishments for African American defendants in drug-related cases varied by social and political context. African American defendants adjudicated in jurisdictions characterized by a large Black population received reduced punishments; but in jurisdictions that were characterized by strong law-and-order political support, Black defendants received longer sentences. After introducing these interactions, Blacks faced on average reduced penalties for drug crimes. Blacks were the recipients of adjusted sentencing but not in the uniformly harsh direction proposed by much of the sentencing research. In sum, the results of this research add to the growing literature documenting the political foundations of punishment patterns in the U.S. criminal courts.

Social Inequality and County-Level Correlates of State Prison Releases and Releases from Community Supervision

“…The data underlying this analysis do not allow any more detailed insight regarding this possibility. However, the sentencing research seems to support this speculation since many researchers have argued that judges and prosecutors share the underlying values of their constituents and are typically elected and/or must stand for re-election (Helms & Jacobs, 2002;Helms, 2009;Helms & Costanza, 2010). This ever-present reality may be expected to shape the courtroom calculus concerning offenders so that in the most politically conservative jurisdictions judges and prosecutors lean more strongly toward incarceration.…”

“…Drug offending has been the focus of political discourse throughout the past 40 years, and has been suspected as a key source of growing prison populations (Helms & Costanza, 2010) and other social control processes (Helms & Costanza, 2009). We proxy for the level of drug offending with an indicator of police drug arrests.…”

“…The punishment literature provides a variety of clues that can assist in formulating actionable remedies. For example, there is evidence that variation in structured environments and ascribed characteristics of offenders correlate with punishment severity (Hogg 2011;Helms and Costanza 2010;Paternoster, Brame, Bacon, & Ditchfield, 2004;Helms 2009;Helms & Jacobs, 2002;Hallett, 2002;Feld, 1991). These and other studies offer conclusive evidence that more severe sanctions are leveled at offenders from disorganized, minority and economically disadvantaged environments (Note 1).…”

Federal Sentencing Guidelines andUnited States v. Booker: Social Context and Sentencing Disparity

“…Specifically, research finds that conservative political climates are associated with expansions in prison admissions (Jacobs & Helms, 1996, 2001; Jacobs & Jackson, 2010) and spending on corrections (Jacobs & Helms, 1999; Jacobs & Jackson, 2010). Moreover, quite often, political context interacts with individual-level offender characteristics, such as race/ethnicity and sex, to explain variation in criminal justice outcomes (Helms & Costanza, 2010; Helms & Jacobs, 2002). For example, Helms and Jacobs (2002) found that African Americans and males tend to receive more punitive sanctions when they are sentenced in courts embedded within conservative political climates.…”

The contagious nature of imprisonment: an agent-based model to explain racial disparities in incarceration rates

“…Scholars offer several explanations, including differential exposure to police surveillance [ 9 ], prosecutorial discrimination [ 11 ], the use of incarceration to deal with a ‘racial threat’ [ 12 , 13 ] or sentencing disparities between Blacks and Whites. Although studies reveal that racial sentencing disparities are reduced when legal factors [ 14 – 16 ] or social contexts [ 17 , 18 ] are considered, a recent meta-analysis reports that sentencing disparities remain even after controlling for these factors [ 4 ]. While the magnitude of the difference is small and variable, it is largest in cases involving discretionary powers and for drug offences.…”