Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing Outcomes: Clarifying the Role of Criminal History

Abstract

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.

Racial, Ethnic, Gender, and Economic Sentencing Disparity

“…However, within the broad categories of violent and drug offenses, there is mixed evidence that racial/ethnic disparities are amplified in less serious cases (Kautt & Spohn, 2002;Lehmann, 2020;Spohn & Cederblom, 1991;Steen et al, 2005). The interactive effects of minority status and criminal history are likewise somewhat inconsistent; while some work has revealed aggravated disparities among offenders with little or no prior record (e.g., Franklin & Henry, 2020;Hester & Hartman, 2017;Spohn & Cederblom, 1991), others have found the opposite pattern (e.g., Miethe & Moore, 1986;.…”

Trial Penalties under Florida’s Sentencing Guidelines: The Moderating Role of Case Seriousness

“…This issue is compounded in estimates from non-linear models such as logistic regression, where the magnitudes and signs of the interaction terms can be misleading since there can be notable variations in the effect of one interaction variable at different levels of the other variable (Ai & Norton, 2003;Mize, 2019). Accordingly, following the example of prior some research (e.g., Augustyn et al, 2019;Franklin & Henry, 2020;Hauser & Peck, 2017), the predicted probabilities of a sentence to prison are estimated using the coefficients presented in Model 1 of Table 3, and the marginal effects of mode of conviction across the levels of case seriousness are calculated from these probabilities (Buis, 2010;Williams, 2012). This approach has the benefit of providing visually intuitive estimates of the trial effect on the probability of a sentence to prison at each value of case seriousness.…”

Race, Ethnicity, and Punishment for Federal Sex Offenses: Changing Composition in Child Pornography and Sex Abuse Cases and Temporal Disparity in Sentencing Over Time

“…The majority of previous empirical research has interpreted findings of extra-legal disparity as providing support for a focal concerns framework of judicial decision making (Maddan & Hartley, 2018). Notably, very few studies examining racial and ethnic disparity, however, go beyond Black-White-Hispanic comparisons, in fact, only a handful of studies have examined the treatment of Other races compared with Whites, such as Asian defendants (Johnson & Betsinger, 2009) and Native American defendants (Franklin, 2013;Franklin & Henry, 2020;Ulmer & Bradley, 2019).…”

“…Most of the existing federal sentencing studies, however, have focused on understanding racial/ethnic disparities among all defendants sentenced in federal courts regardless of the type of crime charged (Feldmeyer & Ulmer, 2011;Franklin & Henry, 2020;Johnson & Betsinger, 2009;Light et al, 2014;Mustard, 2001;Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000;Ulmer et al, 2016) or among specific offense types such as federal immigration (Hartley & Tillyer, 2012) or narcotics offenses (Lynch & Omori, 2018;Ward et al, 2016). In contrast, little research has examined the determinants of sentencing outcomes for those convicted of federal sex offenses; studies examining racial/ ethnic disparities that emerge among federal sex offense cases specifically are even more sparse.…”