Racial Disparities under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines: The Role of Judicial Discretion and Mandatory Minimums

Fischman, Joshua B.; Schanzenbach, Max M.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1636419

Cited by 35 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Taken together, and consistent with Ulmer et al. (,b), Fischman and Schanzenbach (), and Rehavi and Starr (), our findings further call into question the Sentencing Commission's interpretation of post‐ Booker sentence outcomes. We found little evidence that judges’ recently increased freedom to sentence outside of the Guidelines is the primary cause of any increases in unwarranted variations in drug trafficking sentence outcomes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Fischman and Schanzenbach () more directly tested the emergence of observed racial disparities in sentence outcomes over time, also finding that increased sentence disparity between blacks and whites is largely due to prosecutors’ use of mandatory minimum statutes. Specifically, disparities emerge as judges bump up against those minimums in sentencing, especially in the post‐ Booker period.…”

Section: The Guidelines Become Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, disparities emerge as judges bump up against those minimums in sentencing, especially in the post‐ Booker period. Their findings “suggest that judicial discretion does not contribute to, and may in fact mitigate, racial disparities in Guidelines sentencing” (Fischman & Schanzenbach : 761). Finally, in terms of between‐district variations, including whether Booker has increased racial disparities, Farrell and Ward's () work suggests that analyses attempting to isolate the impact of formal legal change are complicated by other co‐occurring changes to the federal system.…”

Section: The Guidelines Become Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both Rehavi and Starr () and Fischman and Schanzenbach () zero in on an important contextual consideration as to how cases are settled in the post‐ Booker era, which is that the mandatory minimums enacted by Congress in the 1980s and 1990s are left untouched by the legal decisions. In cases subject to mandatory minimum sentences, the influence of the Booker line of cases is limited to the instance when the Guidelines sentence is lengthier than the statutory minimum, and its extent of influence stops at that minimum.…”

Section: The Guidelines Become Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Legal Change and Sentencing Norms in the Wake of Booker: The Impact of Time and Place on Drug Trafficking Cases in Federal Court

Lynch

Omori²

2014

Law Soc Rev

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The federal sentencing guidelines have lost some authoritative force since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a series of recent cases that the guidelines are advisory, rather than presumptive, in determining criminal sentences. While these court decisions represent a dramatic legal intervention, sociolegal scholarship suggests that organizational norms are likely to change slowly and less dramatically than the formal law itself. The research reported here looks specifically at the consequences of such legal transformations over time and across locale, using multilevel analysis of U.S. Sentencing Commission sentence outcome data from 1993 to 2009. Our findings suggest that districts vary considerably from each other in sentencing practices over the time period studied, and that there is relative within-district stability of outcomes within districts over time, including in response to the Supreme Court's mandates. We also find that policy change appears to influence the mechanisms by which cases are adjudicated in order to reach normative outcomes. Finally, we find that the relative district-level reliance upon mandatory minimums, which were not directly impacted by the guidelines changes, is an important factor in how drug trafficking cases are adjudicated. We conclude that local legal practices not only diverge in important ways across place, but also become entrenched over time such that top-down legal reform is largely reappropriated and absorbed into locally established practices.We would like to thank

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: The Guidelines Become Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Guidelines Become Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Guidelines Become Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Legal Change and Sentencing Norms in the Wake of Booker: The Impact of Time and Place on Drug Trafficking Cases in Federal Court

Lynch

Omori²

2014

Law Soc Rev

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“…Mustard (), for instance, uses data from 1991 to 1994 while Wu and Delone () use data from 2006 to 2008. Research investigating temporal trends in sentencing disparities demonstrates that legal inequality often varies over time and across jurisdictions, suggesting that punishment practices track temporal and demographic shifts (Fischman & Schanzenbach ; Koons‐Witt ; Kramer & Ulmer ; Miethe & Moore ; Pruit & Wilson ; Stolzenberg & D'Alessio ; Wooldredge ). However, research has yet to investigate the interactions between both time and place to understand how court contexts may condition the trends in legal inequality.…”

Section: Race/ethnicity Citizenship and Punishmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The New Face of Legal Inequality: Noncitizens and the Long-Term Trends in Sentencing Disparities across U.S. District Courts, 1992–2009

Light

2014

Law Soc Rev

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In the wake of mass immigration from Latin America, legal scholars have shifted focus from racial to ethnic inequality under the law. A series of studies now suggest that Hispanics may be the most disadvantaged group in U.S. courts, yet this body of work has yet to fully engage the role of citizenship status. The present research examines the punishment consequences for non‐U.S. citizens sentenced in federal courts between 1992 and 2009. Drawing from work in citizenship studies and sociolegal inequality, I hypothesize that nonstate members will be punished more severely than U.S. citizens, and any trends in Hispanic ethnicity over this period will be linked to punitive changes in the treatment of noncitizens. In line with this hypothesis, results indicate a considerable punishment gap between citizens and noncitizens—larger than minority‐white disparities. Additionally, this citizenship “penalty” has increased at the incarceration stage, explaining the majority of the increase in Hispanic‐white disparity over the past two decades. As international migration increases, these findings call for greater theoretical and empirical breadth in legal inequality research beyond traditional emphases, such as race and ethnicity.

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How Do Criminal Courts Respond in Times of Crisis? Evidence from 9/11

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Dinsmore

Massoglia

2019

American Journal of Sociology

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How courts make decisions during national emergencies has been a key focus of legal scholarship, yet we know comparatively little about how courts respond to national crises in one of their core functionscriminal sentencing. This article addresses this gap by leveraging the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, to examine the punishment of foreign nationals before and after a national emergency. Using difference-in-difference-in-differences estimation, this article finds little evidence that the severity of sentences for non-U.S. citizens changed appreciably nationwide. This article does find, however, considerable evidence of a more local 9/11 effect, whereby the sentencing gap between citizens and noncitizens widened significantly in the New York and Washington, D.C., District Courts following the attacks. Using restricted data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, this article finds suggestive evidence that the differences in sentencing following 9/11 are likely attributable to changes in judges' behavior, rather than policy shifts or changes in prosecutorial decisions.How do courts respond to national security emergencies? Answering this question speaks to fundamental principles about the rule of law in democratic 1 We are indebted to Jeffery Ulmer and the AJS reviewers for their insightful comments.

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Racial Disparities under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines: The Role of Judicial Discretion and Mandatory Minimums

Cited by 35 publications

References 29 publications

Legal Change and Sentencing Norms in the Wake of Booker: The Impact of Time and Place on Drug Trafficking Cases in Federal Court

Legal Change and Sentencing Norms in the Wake of Booker: The Impact of Time and Place on Drug Trafficking Cases in Federal Court

The New Face of Legal Inequality: Noncitizens and the Long-Term Trends in Sentencing Disparities across U.S. District Courts, 1992–2009

How Do Criminal Courts Respond in Times of Crisis? Evidence from 9/11

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