The “Liberation” of Federal Judges’ Discretion in the Wake of the Booker/Fanfan Decision: Is There Increased Disparity and Divergence between Courts?

Ulmer, Jeffery T.; Light, Michael T.; Kramer, John H.

doi:10.1080/07418825.2011.553726

Cited by 77 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…1 Given the rejection of a guidelines system based on grids, to assess the level of consistency we will not be able to rely on the standard measures of compliance -i.e. statistics denoting the percentages of sentences following the prescribed outcome (Frase, 2005;Kramer and Ulmer, 2002;Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission, 2010;Oregon Criminal Sentencing Commission, 2003;Scott, 2010;Tonry, 1987;and Ulmer et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing Consistency in Sentencing: Exploring the Effects of Guidelines in England and Wales

Pina-Sánchez

Linacre²

2014

J Quant Criminol

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Objectives: The development and application of methods to assess consistency in sentencing before and after the 2011 England and Wales assault guideline came into force.Methods: We use the Crown Court Sentencing Survey to compare the goodness of fit of two regression analyses of sentence length on a set of legal factors before and after the assault guideline came into force. We then monitor the dispersion of residuals from these regressions models across time. Finally, we compare the variance in sentence length of equivalent types of offences using exact matching.Results: We find that legal factors can explain a greater portion of variability in sentencing after the guideline was implemented. Furthermore, we detect that the unexplained variability in sentencing decreases steadily during 2011, while results from exact matching point to a statistically significant average reduction in the variance of sentence length amongst same types of offences.Conclusions: We demonstrate the relevance of two new methods that can be used to produce more robust assessments regarding the evolution of consistency in sentencing, even in situations when only observational non-hierarchical data is available. The application of these methods showed an improvement in consistency during 2011 in England and Wales, although this positive effect cannot be conclusively ascribed to the implementation of the new assault guideline.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing Consistency in Sentencing: Exploring the Effects of Guidelines in England and Wales

Pina-Sánchez

Linacre²

2014

J Quant Criminol

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“…While examining main effects and race/ethnicity-sex combinations could provide an interesting exercise in intuition-building, anonymous reviewers have pointed that those hypotheses have been sufficiently tested in previous research using similar data (see Ulmer et al, 2011a;USSC, 2010). Thus, I present only the joint models here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, following previous research, immigration offenses are also excluded from the analyses (see Ulmer et al, 2011a;2011b).…”

Section: Dependent Variablementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following both the United States Sentencing Commission Report (2010) and recent research on US federal sentencing outcomes (Ulmer et al 2011a(Ulmer et al , 2011b, the data is partitioned The dependent variable is estimated using ordinary least squares regression techniques.…”

Section: Analytic Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This body of research suggests that since Booker, the volume of departures has increased (Hofer, 2007), but in a broad sense, racial disparity in US sentencing has not increased (Fischman and Schanzenbach, 2012;Lynch and Omari, 2014;Starr and Rehavi, 2013;Ulmer et al, 2011a;2011b). The current research pays greater attention to differences at the intersections of race/ethnicity, sex, and age to examine whether some groups have been affected differently than others.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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An intersectional approach to race/ethnicity, sex, and age disparity in federal sentencing outcomes: An examination of policy across time periods

Nowacki¹

2016

Criminology & Criminal Justice

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Approaches to intersectionality stress the importance of recognizing multiple, intersecting inequalities. As such, recent sentencing research has examined the changing role of extra-legal characteristics on United States federal sentencing outcomes in the aftermath of recent policy changes (e.g. United States v. Booker), but scholarship has less often examined these characteristics at the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and, especially age. This article uses an intersectional approach to examine the influence of these characteristics net of legally relevant characteristics. Using ordinary least squares regression procedures, the author examines the role of the joint effects of extra-legal variables on sentence length decisions across four distinct time periods. Net of control variables, results indicate that young black men are the group most likely to receive the longest sentences, but interesting differences between other groups also emerge.

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Disparities in Sentencing

Rousseau

Baranger

2017

The Encyclopedia of Corrections

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Sentencing guidelines in the United States and elsewhere have been established for the purposes of eliminating disparity and increasing fairness in criminal sentencing; however, criminal justice actors retain some discretion in the determination of punishment. At the US federal level, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 set specific guidelines for sentencing. As a result, only legally relevant variables should play a role in the determination of the enactment of sentences. In 2005, with the United States vs. Booker and subsequent judicial decisions, federal judicial discretion was increased when guidelines were deemed unconstitutional, as a result of which guidelines became advisory only. Research since the enactment of guidelines posits a variety of extralegal variables, including race and sex, as having influence throughout the sentencing process, from decision to prosecute through sentencing. Even when legal factors such as crime type, criminal history, and guideline recommendations are controlled, disparities in sentencing outcomes exist.

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The “Liberation” of Federal Judges’ Discretion in the Wake of the Booker/Fanfan Decision: Is There Increased Disparity and Divergence between Courts?

Cited by 77 publications

References 48 publications

Enhancing Consistency in Sentencing: Exploring the Effects of Guidelines in England and Wales

Enhancing Consistency in Sentencing: Exploring the Effects of Guidelines in England and Wales

An intersectional approach to race/ethnicity, sex, and age disparity in federal sentencing outcomes: An examination of policy across time periods

Disparities in Sentencing

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