The Effects of Race/Ethnicity and National Origin on Length of Sentence in the United States Virgin Islands

Abstract

Although researchers have acknowledged the importance of environmental and contextual factors in the judicial decision-making process, there is a lack of attention to sentencing decisions and outcomes in territorial courts of the United States. Drawing on the focal concerns perspective, this study analyzes the sentences of 583 federal defendants sentenced in the District Court of the United States Virgin Islands between 1997 and 2004. The findings reveal that net of legally relevant factors, Hispanics receive harsher sentences than blacks, and legal aliens receive prison sentences that are significantly longer than those received by U.S. citizens. However, the influence of legal alien status is driven by the harsher sentences imposed on defendants who are citizens of the Dominican Republic. The meaning and implications of the influence of citizenship status and race/ethnicity in a context where race/ethnicity are not overriding statuses, as they are on the U.S. mainland, are discussed.

Geography and Sentencing: Does Country of Citizenship Influence Sentence Longevity?

“…While some studies found no evidence of an influence of citizenship on sentence outcomes (Everett and Wojkiewicz 2002;Feldmeyer et al 2015) the results of others (Wolfe et al 2011;Light 2014;Wu and D'Angelo 2014) detect sentencing variation grounded on the citizenship status of the defendant. A smaller, but growing body of sentencing research (Iles 2009;Logue 2009;Orrick and Piquero 2015) has gone beyond citizenship status to explore the effects of national origins. Iles (2009), for example, disaggregated the legal alien category in her study into four groups (South Americans/Mexican immigrants; Dominican Republic; Caribbean nations; and all other countries.…”

“…A smaller, but growing body of sentencing research (Iles 2009;Logue 2009;Orrick and Piquero 2015) has gone beyond citizenship status to explore the effects of national origins. Iles (2009), for example, disaggregated the legal alien category in her study into four groups (South Americans/Mexican immigrants; Dominican Republic; Caribbean nations; and all other countries. With U.S. citizens serving as the reference group, she found that citizens of the Dominican Republic were awarded sentences that were 29.7 percent longer than the sentences imposed upon U.S. citizens (there were no differences among the other legal alien groups).…”

“…Similar to earlier studies, we focus solely on non-U.S. citizens. However, unlike Iles (2009) who confined the illegal immigrants in her study to four groups or Logue (2009) who fixated on Mexican versus non-Mexican Latinos, we take a more pointed approach by classifying the wide array of defendant's country of citizenship into geographical regions of the world. We begin by briefly discussing a conceptual framework that we believe is relevant for studying the effects of national origins on the sentencing length of immigrants.…”

“…Sentencing scholars have long relied on the focal concern perspective to explain the sentencing decision making processes of judges, specifically the sources of unwarranted disparities (Steffensmeier, Ulmer, and Kramer, 1998;Steffensmeier and Demuth 2000;Kramer and Ulmer 2002;Hartley, Maddan, and Spohn 2007;Freiburger 2009;Iles 2009 andWolfe et al 2011). The cornerstone of this perspective is that judge's sentencing decisions are based on three focal concerns.…”

U.S. Territorial Exclusion in Federal Sentencing Research: Can it be Justified?

“…This is presumed to be the case as there are no known studies explicitly designed to explore similarities and differences in case processing and sentence outcomes between states and territories. Although Iles (2009) has come close by providing a snapshot of federal sentencing in the United States Virgin Islands for fiscal years 1997-2002, she did not explore how similar or different sentencing is as compared to the U.S. mainland. Nevertheless, her work demonstrated a need for future research in the American territories.…”