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Courtroom Context and Sentencing
Abstract
This study provides an evaluation of the major policy shift in sentencing practices over the past half-century – namely the shift from indeterminate to determinant sentencing policies and the use of sentencing guidelines. The theoretical literature on courtroom organization and focal concerns informs this evaluation of determinate sentencing practices in Florida. Drawing from prior theoretical and empirical research, hierarchical linear and generalized linear models are estimated to assess courtroom effects on individual level sentencing outcomes. The findings document that location matters when sentenced in Florida. Specifically, the likelihood of being sentenced to prison and the length of sentence varies across counties, even after controlling for individual case and offender characteristics and a variety of contextual characteristics. Additionally, the influence of legal and extra-legal factors on prison in/out and sentence length decisions varies significantly across counties. Several court characteristics, including court size, caseload pressure and trial rate assert direct influence on a county’s likelihood of prison in/out and mean sentence length decisions.
... Empirical evidence also suggests that an organization's size and employee autonomy influence decision-making. Research shows that organization size and employee autonomy are related in that they affect the extent to which decision-makers work collectively or in silos (Arazan et al., 2019;Ulmer & Bradley, 2006). ...
... While it was not within the scope of this study to explore the role of caseload size on community mental health treatment decisions for criminal justice clients with SMI, over 13% of service providers volunteered that their caseload was higher than it should be given their administrative responsibilities. Given this finding, and the corresponding empirical support of caseload size on decision making (Arazan et al., 2019;Ulmer & Bradley, 2006), future research on the role of organizational-level challenges to treatment should extend and refine the current analysis to include the effect of caseload size on service provider perceptions. Related qualitative research would do well to consider why CMHCs do not have criminal justice-specific goals. ...
... Although international environmental crime has not been comprehensively stipulated by international criminal law conventions, in view of the strong demand of the international community to bring violations of international environmental law into the international criminal system, international environmental crime as a major type of international crime is also a general trend, and how to its sentencing has become the focus of research [12]. In recent years, research progress on machine learning and deep learning in the field of natural science is in full swing. ...
... e link between environmental rights, environmental protection, and the courts has become increasingly prominent in recent years; in [23], the author attempted to determine the role of courts in efforts to protect the environment only on the basis of some case law. In [12], the authors studied the transformation from uncertain sentencing policy to decisive sentencing policy and the use of sentencing guidelines. In [24], the authors studied the role of sentencing guidance influence heuristics in shaping sentencing decisions through three methods. ...
Environmental problem is an international problem that transcends national boundaries and develops into regional and global environmental pollution and ecological problems. Facing the increasing environmental pollution, the international community has successively formulated many relevant environmental pollution prevention laws, but the world situation is complicated after all, environmental problems still emerge endlessly, and the protection of environmental rights has become the consensus of the international community. Environmental right is an integral part of human rights, and protecting environmental right is the concrete expression and proper meaning of protecting human rights. Using international criminal law to protect environmental rights will play a positive role in global environmental protection. As with the development of computer technology, the research of machine learning has gradually transferred to the field of social science, especially the judicial field. While sentencing is a crucial part of environmental crime, this paper studies the sentencing of environmental rights cases from the perspective of international criminal law and uses Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to determine the sentencing of environmental rights cases. Through the experiment on the Integrated Database (IDB) dataset, the results show that the introduction of CNN improves the effect of the sentencing term prediction model and the fine prediction model significantly. The CNN-based model scored 91.6542 in the sentencing term prediction model and 90.8890 in the fine prediction model.
... Empirical evidence also suggests that an organization's size and employee's autonomy can influence decision making. Research shows that organization size and employee autonomy are related in that they effect the extent to which decision-makers work collectively or in silos (Arazan et al., 2019;Ulmer & Bradley, 2006). ...
... While it was not within the scope of this study to explore the role of caseload size on community mental health treatment decisions for criminal justice clients with SMI, over 13% of service providers volunteered that their caseload was higher than it should be given their administrative responsibilities. Given this finding, and the corresponding empirical support of caseload size on decision making (Arazan et al., 2019;Ulmer & Bradley, 2006), future research on the role of organizational-level challenges to treatment should extend and refine the current analysis to include the effect of caseload size on service provider perceptions. Related qualitative research would do well to consider why CMHCs do not have criminal justice-specific goals. ...
... The association between the size of an organization and decision-making has been shown to affect decision-making across a variety of settings and disciplines. For example, empirical evidence suggests that court size explains employee autonomy and the extent to which decisionmakers work collectively or in silos 1 in the adjudication of cases (Arazan et al., 2019;Lowery, 2016;Ulmer & Bradley, 2006). Along these same lines, research has demonstrated that court size explains disparities in sentencing decisions (Eisenstein et al., 1991;Kramer & Ulmer, 2002;Steffensmeier et al., 1998;Ulmer & Johnson, 2004). ...
... The criminal justice and CMHC systems are no stranger to high caseloads (Gayman et al., 2018;Kim et al., 2018), particularly caseloads comprised of complex client needs (Korasz et al., 2018). Research suggests that organizational-level variables, such as caseload pressure, affect decision making (Arazan et al., 2019;Dixon, 1995;Goulette, 2013;Hartley & Tillyer, 2018;Holland, 2016;Lin et al., 2010;Stemen & Escobar, 2018;Ulmer & Bradley, 2006;Ulmer & Johnson, 2004b). More simply put, caseload size is negatively correlated with the amount of time allotted per case and other provider decisions. ...
Context: With mass incarceration and a population of criminal justice-involved individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) in the criminal justice system at an all-time high, research on community mental health centers (CMHC) demonstrates a lack of treatment for justice-involved persons. Scholars have argued that providing appropriate treatment to criminal justice-involved individuals with SMI could ameliorate symptoms, and therefore, improve the effectiveness of mental health treatment to reduce recidivism in individuals who are criminal justice-involved with SMI diagnoses. To reduce recidivism for this population, it is important to understand how treatment decisions are made for criminal justice-involved individuals with SMI who are in the community. This study aimed to analyze CMHC service provider interviews regarding the role of organizational budget, goals, policy, and legislation on treatment decisions for individuals with criminal justice involvement and SMI.
Methodology: Following Indiana University Institutional Review Board approval, the researcher used a qualitative approach to interview CMHC service providers in Indiana to assess perceptions of the effect of organizational-level variables on treatment decisions for justiceinvolved individuals. Between December 2019 and April 2020, a total of 61 CMHC service providers were interviewed. Questions asked service providers about their caseload, typical treatment plans for individuals with criminal justice involvement and SMI, as well as how service provider and organizational goals, organizational policies, budget, and law can aid in or limit treatment decisions for this population of clients. Interviews lasted, on average, one hour.
Findings: Findings are consistent with prior literature in that organizational budget and policy, service provider and organizational goals, and law influence decision-making. However, unexpectedly, the barriers to treatment decisions are driven by the larger system of health insurance and criminal justice policies. There are four important implications for policy and practice. First, community mental health centers (CMHC) are still underfunded; thus, lacking capacity to appropriately treat the population for which CMHCs were originally developed. Second, service providers perceived their greatest law-related constraint to be Medicaid related. Third, and most importantly, collaboration with the criminal justice system can prevent clients from receiving the most appropriate treatment to address their criminogenic and mental health needs.
... Research is usually conducted to identify whether and under what circumstances the DWI defendant receives a sentence of prison versus non-custodial supervision, which will be referred to as in/out decisions, as well as addressing the length of sentences if prison time is imposed. Broadly speaking, results show that most of the variation in both in/out and length-of-prison decisions is a function of the particulars of individual cases and offenders (Arazan et al., 2019). Factors at the individual case level such as race, gender, prior record, and seriousness of the crime are found to correlate more strongly with sentencing outcomes than other factors (Freiberg & Morgan, 2004). ...
In this study, we conducted a quantitative analysis to examine the influences of legal and extra-legal factors on judicial decisions to release offenders without imposing any penalty. Through an investigation of 945 judgments in driving while intoxicated (DWI) cases in China, our study uncovers significant correlations between penal exemption and relevant legal and extra-legal factors. Four significant findings stand out. First, the severity of an accident and any associated pre-trial detention are of significant relevance to the granting of penal exemption. Second, offenders with higher social status are more likely to be discharged without penalty. Third, judges prefer a “helpful” accused to one who merely admits guilt. Fourth, the likelihood of an offender being exempted from criminal punishment greatly increases if the offender meets four or more exemption criteria. However, Chinese judges do not always recognize all exemption factors in individual cases, thus limiting the application of penal exemption.
... However, prosecutors' identities and experiences are not typically integrated with these existing theoretical frameworks to make sense of how prosecutors move from a series of limited case facts to initial charging decisions, and subsequent plea offers. Much of the research on prosecution focuses on differences in case outcomes between court communities (Arazan et al. 2019;Franklin 2010;Kautt 2002;Martin et al. 2018) and between defendants within the same court communities (Jawjeong 2016;Steffensmeier et al. 2017). The more limited body of research that examines variation in case outcomes between court actors operating within the same court community, often emphasizes the power of professional and organizational socialization (Bowman et al. 2023;Spohn 1990;Steffensmeier and Britt 2001;Steffensmeier and Hebert 1999;but see Johnson 2014;Wooldredge 2010). ...
Sociolegal scholarship has long noted the many ways in which the law is interpreted and selectively applied by human decision-makers. Yet, the processes underlying one of the most significant discretionary waypoints in the criminal legal process – prosecutorial charging decisions – remain opaque. Using data from interviews and focus groups with prosecutors in three midsized jurisdictions, we propose a model of charging that integrates legal considerations, social identity, and organizational constraints. We find that felony prosecutors weave together legal and extralegal factors, often relying heavily on criminal history, to evaluate defendants’ moral character. Based on their evaluation of a defendant’s character, prosecutors charge strategically to secure a final disposition and sentence they view as appropriate for the defendant. Prosecutors’ identities and experiences act as lenses through which they interpret case facts in their evaluation of defendants’ character. However, the level of discretion provided by their chief prosecutor and the culture of the court community in which they work condition the process by which prosecutors achieve their desired outcomes for cases.
... The operationalization goes beyond the traditional urban-rural dichotomy prevalent in much prior research, yet county-level measures may still fail to capture the organizational richness of different courts (see Ulmer, 2019;Ulmer & Johnson, 2017). Future research is needed, including primary data collection, on the organizational nature of courts, including court communities and their local legal culture as well as characteristics of courtroom workgroup members (see, e.g., Arazan et al., 2019;Eisenstein et al., 1988;Farrell et al., 2009;Hester, 2017;Haynes et al., 2010;Metcalfe, 2016). ...
Drawing on Feld's (1991) "justice by geography" thesis, we examined whether juvenile court outcomes and case-level influences on those outcomes varied across urban and rural courts. Using a sample of 60,068 juvenile referrals across 66 counties in one state, we estimated direct effects of urbanism on detention, petition, adjudication, and judicial placement, as well as cross-level interactions between urbanism and several case-level factors for each outcome. We found limited support for the hypotheses. First, findings indicated that odds of detention were significantly greater in more urban courts, but indicated no differences in other outcomes. Second, findings also indicated greater extralegal differences (race, sex, and age) in more urban courts-contrary to hypotheses. Taken together, findings highlight the localized yet complex nature of juvenile justice processing and emphasize the need for additional multilevel research assessing the role of other contextual factors as potential sources of variation across macrosocial units.
... With the exception of scholarship that tests racial/ethnic threat (Feldmeyer et al., 2015;Feldmeyer & Ulmer, 2011;Wang & Mears, 2015), and a handful of studies of Pennsylvania and California (Chen, 2013;Johnson, 2006;Ulmer & Johnson, 2004), the context has been largely limited in the research on sentence length. The research done on the relationship between contextual characteristics and sentence length has generally focused on jurisdictions within a single state (Arazan et al., 2019;Chen, 2013;Feldmeyer et al., 2015;Johnson, 2006;Ulmer & Johnson, 2004;Wooldredge, 2007) or has analyzed state context (Stringer & Holland, 2016;Wang et al., 2013) or neighborhood context (Wooldredge, 2007) and not county-level context. Sentencing laws and guidelines are enacted at the state level, but power is exercised at the county level, and jurisdictional differences may influence sentencing patterns as a result of different legal and social contexts (Helms, 2009;Helms & Jacobs, 2002;Johnson, 2006;Weidner et al., 2004). ...
This article examines the relationship between race, ethnicity, county-level contextual variables, and sentence lengths for Black, Latinx, and White individuals sentenced to prison. Hierarchical linear modeling is used to examine the focal concerns perspective, the racial/ethnic threat thesis, socioeconomic inequality across racial/ethnic groups, political climate, and individual-level factors and sentence lengths. Data come from the National Corrections Reporting Program and other sources to examine sentences for over 500,000 individuals admitted to U.S. prisons between 2015 and 2017, from 751 counties. Results indicate that Black and Latinx individuals receive longer sentences than their White counterparts, even after controlling for relevant variables. The racial/ethnic threat thesis is not supported. Black individuals are sentenced longer than their White counterparts in counties with larger shares of Republican voters. Findings indicate that race and ethnicity continue to be salient predictors of punishment, with Black and Latinx individuals facing harsher outcomes than their White counterparts.
While Black-identified offenders are sentenced more harshly than White-identified offenders, there has been limited exploration of skin tone’s influence on sentencing. We aimed to systematically review the association between offender skin tone and criminal sentencing outcomes. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, we searched seven databases. We included studies that used official measures of sentence type or length of incarceration. We assessed risk of bias using a modified version of the Critical Appraisal Tool for Cross-Sectional Studies. Results were narratively synthesized. Seven studies met inclusion criteria; of these, three had low risk of bias. Three studies measured sentence type, finding that darker skin tones were associated with harsher sentence types. Studies with greater risks of bias generally found associations between darker skin tones and longer sentences; low-risk studies did not find such associations. Included studies generally found associations between offender skin tone and sentencing outcomes, but methodological and contextual differences and limitations may explain heterogeneity in findings. Driven by differences and limitations, we offer a roadmap for future research.
The United States currently leads the world in the number and proportion of individuals held under correctional supervision. Prosecutors are widely considered to be the most influential actors in the courtroom, and some current reform efforts center around prosecutor-driven reductions in punitiveness. However, little is known about the extent to which elected chief prosecutors impact punitiveness in local courtrooms. This study examines how dismissal and active sentence rates in nine mid- to large-sized prosecutorial districts in North Carolina are influenced by the identity of the elected District Attorney (DA) who was in office when the case was disposed. The study sample included four types of criminal cases (marijuana possession and sale, possession of firearm by felon, larceny, and driving while intoxicated) resolved in the nine districts from 2005–2018. A two-way fixed effects regression analyses showed that elected prosecutors significantly influenced dismissal and active sentence rates in their districts, typically to a small degree (by less than 5%) but sometimes by 20–30%. However, prosecutors did not influence punitiveness consistently across all crime types or according to traditional political party. This study suggests that the elected prosecutor matters in local criminal prosecution and enhances the current understanding of the power of the elected prosecutor to shape punitiveness in local courtrooms.
The legality of police arrests is decided at initial hearings in Mexico City's criminal justice system. In the crime of simple drug possession, decisions of illegality are much more frequent than in any other crime. I hypothesize that the perception of the person arrested, the importance of the crime to the problems of insecurity, and concern about the functioning of the hearing system are factors that impact this outcome. I employ a mixed methodological strategy. Interviews with legal operators show that people arrested for simple drug possession are seen more as “victims” than “criminals,” and their prosecution as a problem for the workload. Based on a sample of hearings, I compare the probability of illegality of detention in the crimes of simple drug possession and drug dealing, crimes with similar detention dynamics. The higher probability of illegality decisions for the first crime supports the qualitative findings. I discuss the results in the context of studies on initial hearings, and more generally, on the importance of extralegal factors in the functioning of the justice system.
Objectives
We examine the relationship between political and religious context and juvenile court dispositions, including whether case-level indicators of focal concerns are moderated by community politics and religion.
Methods
Using a sample of 55,328 juvenile defendants across 175 counties in three states, we first employ multilevel modeling to estimate the direct effects of political and religious context on odds of placement. Second, we examine cross-level interactions between political and religious context, on the one hand, and major case-level predictors of placement, on the other.
Results
We found mixed support for the hypotheses. While neither political nor religious context were directly associated with odds of placement, religious context moderated several case-level effects. Specifically, findings indicated that violent offenders were punished more harshly in more religious and more religiously homogeneous counties, defendants with a prior record were punished less harshly in more religious and more religiously homogenous counties, Hispanic defendants were punished less harshly in more evangelical counties, and male defendants were punished less harshly in more religiously homogeneous counties.
Conclusion
Juvenile punishment varies across different courts and systems, yet major contextual hypotheses for this variation (e.g., minority threat) have received limited empirical support. Our findings indicate that other aspects of community context, most notably religiosity, may moderate the relationship between case-level factors and juvenile court punishment.
Plea deals resolve the vast majority of prosecuted criminal cases in the U.S. legal system. Prosecutors hold disproportionate power in plea bargaining and have been blamed for driving punitiveness and racial disparities. Progressive prosecutors aim to reverse these trends, but little is known about how they will alter plea practices. We conducted qualitative interviews with all the assistant district attorneys (ADAs, N = 19) in a mid-sized office with a newly elected progressive DA. Interviews discussed how ADAs implemented office policies and progressive goals in plea bargaining. Prosecutors described working to implement five main progressive goals in their plea decisions: (a) dismissing low-level drug possession charges; (b) avoiding over-penalization, particularly for “victimless” crimes; (c) declining to prosecute weak cases; (d) encouraging open communication with defense; and (e) promoting racial equity. Prosecutors’ descriptions of how these goals guided case decisions illuminate how progressive prosecution may affect the criminal justice system through plea bargaining.
Objectives
The U.S. prison population has fallen 15% overall, 28% for Blacks, and 21% for Hispanics since the Great Recession began. These trends occurred despite rising defendant criminal histories and the continued presence of the punitive policies that drove “mass incarceration.” We test the central hypothesis that court actors employed several discretionary tools available under Florida's sentencing system to reduce prison use, which in turn reduced direct and indirect racial disparities.
Methods
To test this hypothesis, we utilized 20 years of felony cases. Our analyses employ current best practices for testing interactive effects and decomposition models to identify changes in prison use and the factors associated with these changes.
Results
We find criminal history scores rose sharply, but prison use and racial disparities therein fell markedly in the past decade. The key factors driving these trends are reductions in the influence of criminal history on decision-making, increased use of mitigated departures, and the flexibility of Florida's sentencing system to accommodate mitigated departures. In fact, if Florida's sentencing rules had been followed more closely, racial disparities in prison sentences would have grown.
Conclusions
This research has implications for reforms aimed at ending mass incarceration and reducing racial disparities in imprisonment.
The focal concerns approach has been applied broadly in the sentencing literature. Research that has relied on this perspective generally finds that young, non-white men tend to receive the most punitive criminal sanctions. This perspective has less often been applied to non-custodial types of punishments, such as fines. Using data from the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) database from 2009, we examine the effects of defendant characteristics on fine imposition and amounts. In contrast to other sentencing research, we find that Black men under 50 and Black women over 50 are least likely to receive fines. Additionally, Hispanic men 31–49 receive fines of the greatest amounts. The current study contributes to sentencing research by focusing on fines as the sentencing outcome instead of the commonly used sentencing severity and our findings are unique to this area of research.
It is proffered that incarcerating offenders will not attenuate criminal activity because new offenders are readily available to supplant those who are imprisoned. This situation, referred to as offender replacement, is mostly applicable for drug selling crimes where a market for illegal drugs exists. We hypothesize that if the incarceration of established drug offenders attenuates competition and creates a fertile environment for novice drug dealers to enter the market, a rise in the drug incarceration rate should increase the likelihood of first-time drug selling behavior. Using a multilevel modeling procedure, we find that a one-unit increase in the drug incarceration rate results in a 15% rise in the odds of a first-time offender being prosecuted for a drug-selling crime.
Objectives
This article examines the influence of social context on punishment decisions. To this end, we present a theoretical framework to identify outcomes that can occur when police and probation officers work in schools.
Method
The proposed framework draws on organizational theory as well as scholarship on school discipline and punishment and the effects of placing officers in schools. It also draws from insights gathered from site visits, interviews, and focus groups conducted as part of a process evaluation of a school-based delinquency prevention program. We then present data from interviews and focus groups with 41 school-based safety staff to examine the plausibility of the hypothesized framework.
Results
We find that officers’ goals interact with the goals of school-based actors to influence punishment-related outcomes. We also find that officers are not always the more punitive force in the schools and that placing officers in schools may have positive as well as negative effects for youth.
Conclusions
The findings suggest that current accounts of officers in schools are incomplete. Dynamic interactions may occur within organizational partnerships and should be considered when seeking to understand punishment decisions not only in schools but also in other settings.
Sentencing studies have incorporated social context in studying sentencing decisions, but to date the bulk of prior work has focused almost exclusively on county context. An unresolved question is whether there also may be state-level effects on sentencing. Drawing from the minority threat perspective, we examine (1) whether state-level racial and ethnic contexts affect sentencing, (2) whether this effect amplifies the effect of county-level racial and ethnic contexts on sentencing, and (3) whether the interaction of county-level and state-level contextual effects is greater for minorities than for whites. Analysis of State Court Processing Statistics and other data indicates that state-level racial and ethnic contexts are associated with sentencing outcomes and that this effect may differ by outcome (e.g., incarceration versus sentence length) and by type of context (e.g., racial or ethnic). The study's findings and their implications are discussed.
Using federal court data collected by the U.S. Sentencing Commission for the years 1993-1996, this study examines racial/ethnic differences-white versus black versus white-Hispanic versus black-Hispanic-in sentencing outcomes and criteria under the federal sentencing guidelines. Regression analyses of incarceration and term-length decisions reveal considerable judicial consistency in the use of sentencing criteria for all defendants; however, important racial/ethnic disparities in sentencing emerge. Consistent with theoretical hypotheses, the authors find that ethnicity has a small to moderate effect on sentencing outcomes that favors white defendants and penalizes Hispanic defendants; black defendants are in an intermediate position. Hispanic drug offenders are most at risk of receiving the harshest penalties, and their harsher treatment is most pronounced in prosecutor-controlled guidelines departure cases. These findings highlight both a classic organizational tension noted by Weber and a fundamental dilemma in policy efforts to structure sentencing processes (formal rationality) while allowing for judicial and prosecutorial discretion (substantive rationality). The findings also broaden our view of the continuing significance of race in American society-as a matter confronting not only blacks but also Hispanics and perhaps other ethnic groups as well.
As we approach the 21st century, the issue of racial discrimination in sentencing continues to evoke controversy and spark debate. Some researchers contend that crimes by racial minorities are punished more harshly than similar crimes by equally culpable whites; others argue that racial disparities in sentence severity reflect differences in crime seriousness, prior criminal record, and other legally relevant factors that judges consider in determining the appropriate sentence. Some scholars suggest that racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing have been reduced by the sentencing reforms promulgated during the past three decades; others insist that these disparities have been exac- erbated by the policies pursued during the war on drugs. The purpose of this essay is to inform the debate on race, crime, and justice by crit- ically evaluating recent empirical research examining the effect of race/ethnicity on sentence severity and by searching for clues to the contexts or circumstances in which race/ethnicity makes a difference. Forty recent and methodologically sophisticated studies investigating the linkages between race/ethnicity and sentence severity are reviewed; included are 32 studies of sentencing decisions in State courts and eight studies of sentence outcomes at the Federal level.
Research on criminal sentencing, particularly on various types of disparity therein, has been an active field of inquiry for decades. This paper provides a conceptual survey of research on non-capital sentencing outcomes since 2000. I first look backward at the research agenda posed by reviews in the early 1980s, and in 2000. I then discuss theoretical developments in the study of sentencing in the 1990s and 2000s. I then provide an overview of recent sentencing research focused on the following: (1) court organizational and social contexts, (2) individual courtroom workgroup members, (3) disparity conditional on intersecting defendant characteristics, (4) victim characteristics, and (5) earlier case processing events and decisions. I then outline several directions for moving sentencing research forward into the next decade.
Guidelines sentencing data from Pennsylvania for the years 1985–1987 are analyzed to assess the influence of gender on judges' imprisonment decisions. These data provide detailed information on offense severity and prior record, permit statistical controls for other variables thought to affect imprisonment decisions, cover a fairly comprehensive list of common-law offenses (with adequate sample size), and contain judges' dispositional-departure reasons for sentences outside the guidelines schema. The data—analyzed with additive and interactive models–indicate that gender (net of other factors) has a small effect on the likelihood of imprisonment toward lesser jailing of female defendants but has a negligible effect on the length-of-imprisonment decision. Observations and interview responses from selected judges help to clarify the ways in which judges' sentencing practices are gender linked. Together, the statistical and the qualitative data suggest that the sentencing practices of judges are driven by two main concerns, blameworthiness (e.g., as indicated by prior record, type of involvement, remorse) and practicality (e.g., as indicated by child-care responsibility, pregnancy, emotional or physical problems, availability of adequate jail space). Based on our findings, we suspect that when men and women appear in (contemporary) criminal court in similar circumstances and are charged with similar offenses, they receive similar treatment. A major question from a policy perspective is, when gender disparities in sentence outcomes do arise, are the disparities warranted or unwarranted?
Studies of sentencing in jurisdictions with sentencing guidelines have generally failed to specify adequately the effects of offense seriousness and criminal history—the principal factors that, by law, should determine sentencing decisions. As a result, the explanatory power of those models is seriously limited, and regression coefficients representing both legal and extralegal factors may be biased. We present an alternative approach to specify more precisely the effects of legally relevant factors on sentencing outcomes and test the approach using felony sentencing data from Washington State. We find that controlling for the presumptive sentence substantially improves the fit and explanatory power of models predicting sentencing decisions, and that the estimated effects of extralegal factors, specifically sex and race, reduce considerably. The findings have both substantive and methodological implications.
Florida law allows judges to withhold adjudication of guilt for persons who have either pled guilty or been found guilty of a felony. This provision may apply only to persons who will be sentenced to probation, and it allows such individuals to retain all civil rights and to truthfully assert they had not been convicted of a felony. This paper examines the effects of race and Hispanic ethnicity on the withholding of adjudication for 91,477 males sentenced to probation in Florida between 1999 and 2002. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling is used to assess the direct effects of defendant attributes as well as the cross-level interactions between race, ethnicity and community level indicators of threat, such as percentage black and Hispanic and concentrated disadvantage. Our results show that Hispanics and blacks are significantly less likely to have adjudication withheld when other individual and community level factors are controlled. This effect is especially pronounced for blacks and for drug offenders. Cross-level interactions show that concentrated disadvantage has a substantial effect on the adjudication withheld outcome for both black and Hispanic defendants. The implications of these results for the conceptualization of racial/ethnic threat at the individual, situational and social levels are discussed.
Efforts to structure sentencing through guidelines involve a fundamental dilemma for the sociology of law—guidelines attempt to emphasize formal rationality and uniformity (Savelsberg, 1992) while allowing discretion to tailor sentences to fit situations and characteristics of individual defendants when courts deem it warranted (substantive rationality). This exercise of substantive rationality in sentencing based on “extralegal” criteria deemed relevant by local court actors risks the kind of unwarranted disparity that guidelines were intended to reduce. We view local courts as arenas in which two sets of sentencing standards meet—formal rational ones articulated by guidelines vs. substantive, extralegal criteria deemed relevant by local court actors. We use statistical and qualitative data from Pennsylvania, a state whose courts have operated under sentencing guidelines for over a decade. Our analysis examines extralegal differences in three county courts' sentencing outcomes, and then documents ways in which substantive rational sentencing criteria are intertwined with defendants' exercise of their right to trial and their race and gender.
This study extends recent inquiries of contextual effects in sentencing by jointly examining the influence of judge and courtroom social contexts. It combines two recent years of individual sentencing data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) with data on judicial background characteristics and county court social contexts. Three-level hierarchical models are estimated to investigate the influence of judge and county contexts on individual variations in sentencing. Results indicate that nontrivial sentencing variations are associated with both individual judge characteristics and county court contexts. Judicial background factors also condition the influence of individual offender characteristics in important ways. These and other findings are discussed in relation to contemporary theoretical perspectives on courtroom decision making that highlight the importance of both judge and court contexts in sentencing. The study concludes with suggestions for future research on contextual disparities in criminal sentencing.
Criminal sentencing is, along with arresting and prosecuting, among the most important of formal social control decisions. In this study we use hierarchical modeling to test hypotheses about contextual level influences and cross level interaction effects on local court decisions. Most of the explanatory “action,” our analysis shows, is at the individual case level in criminal sentencing. We also find evidence that local contextual features–such as court organizational culture, court caseload pressure, and racial and ethnic composition–affect sentencing outcomes, either directly or in interaction with individual factors. We conclude by discussing theoretical implications of our findings, and how our study points out some dilemmas among civil rights, local autonomy and organizational realities of criminal courts.
Issues of selection bias pervade criminological research. Despite their ubiquity, considerable confusion surrounds various
approaches for addressing sample selection. The most common approach for dealing with selection bias in criminology remains
Heckman’s [(1976) Ann Econ Social Measure 5:475–492] two-step correction. This technique has often been misapplied in criminological
research. This paper highlights some common problems with its application, including its use with dichotomous dependent variables,
difficulties with calculating the hazard rate, misestimated standard error estimates, and collinearity between the correction
term and other regressors in the substantive model of interest. We also discuss the fundamental importance of exclusion restrictions,
or theoretically determined variables that affect selection but not the substantive problem of interest. Standard statistical
software can readily address some of these common errors, but the real problem with selection bias is substantive, not technical.
Any correction for selection bias requires that the researcher understand the source and magnitude of the bias. To illustrate
this, we apply a diagnostic technique by Stolzenberg and Relles [(1997) Am Sociol Rev 62:494–507] to help develop intuition
about selection bias in the context of criminal sentencing research. Our investigation suggests that while Heckman’s two-step
correction can be an appropriate technique for addressing this bias, it is not a magic solution to the problem. Thoughtful consideration is therefore needed before employing this common but overused technique.
Prior studies of criminal sanctioning have focused almost exclusively on individual-level predictors of sentencing outcomes.
However, in recent years, scholars have begun to include social context in their research. Building off of this work—and heeding
calls for testing the racial and ethnic minority threat perspective within a multilevel framework and for separating prison
and jail sentences as distinct outcomes—this paper examines different dimensions of minority threat and explores whether they
exert differential effects on prison versus jail sentences. The findings provide support for the racial threat perspective,
and less support for the ethnic threat perspective. They also underscore the importance of testing for non-linear threat effects
and for separating jail and prison sentences as distinct outcomes. We discuss the findings and their implications for theory,
research, and policy.
KeywordsMinority threat effects-Sentencing
In this Series paper, we examine how mass incarceration shapes inequality in health. The USA is the world leader in incarceration, which disproportionately affects black populations. Nearly one in three black men will ever be imprisoned, and nearly half of black women currently have a family member or extended family member who is in prison. However, until recently the public health implications of mass incarceration were unclear. Most research in this area has focused on the health of current and former inmates, with findings suggesting that incarceration could produce some short-term improvements in physical health during imprisonment but has profoundly harmful effects on physical and mental health after release. The emerging literature on the family and community effects of mass incarceration points to negative health impacts on the female partners and children of incarcerated men, and raises concerns that excessive incarceration could harm entire communities and thus might partly underlie health disparities both in the USA and between the USA and other developed countries. Research into interventions, policies, and practices that could mitigate the harms of incarceration and the post-incarceration period is urgently needed, particularly studies using rigorous experimental or quasi-experimental designs.
Studies of sentencing in jurisdictions with sentencing guidelines have generally failed to specify adequately the effects of offense seriousness and criminal history - the principal factors that, by law, should determine sentencing decisions. As a result, the explanatory power of those models is seriously limited, and regression coefficients representing both legal and extralegal factors may be biased. We present an alternative approach to specify more precisely the effects of legally relevant factors on sentencing outcomes and test the approach using felony sentencing data from Washington State. We find that controlling for the presumptive sentence substantially improves the fit and explanatory power of models predicting sentencing decisions, and that the estimated effects of extralegal factors, specifically sex and race, reduce considerably. The findings have both substantive and methodological implications.
The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 mandated major restructuring of federal sentencing through specific sentencing guidelines. New sentencing guidelines developed by the United States Sentencing Commission and adopted in 1987 explicitly linked sentencing to "relevant conduct"-offense characteristics-and sought to abolish unwarranted sentence disparity. The guidelines substantially reduced judicial discretion and resulted in a criminalization and sentencing process that is largely prosecutor controlled. The author has generated hypotheses that relate defendant characteristics, guilty pleas, and departures from sentencing guidelines to sentence outcomes under the federal sentencing guidelines. She first examined the variables influencing sentence severity for the drug offenders who were sentenced in 1991-92. She then explored the interaction effects by estimating the tobit equation separately for three groups-black, white, and Hispanic defendants-to discover whether defendant's ethnicity conditions the effect of other defendant characteristics, guidelines-defined legally relevant variables, guilty pleas, and departures on sentence severity. Her analysis reveals that disparity in federal sentencing of drug offenders is linked not only to offense-related variables, as structured by the guidelines, but also to defendant characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, educational level, and noncitizenship, which under the guidelines are specified as legally irrelevant.
Theories based on static and simplistic conceptions of the social significance of race fail to account for anomalous research findings and confuse our understanding of race-related outcomes. To substantiate this argument, an analysis is presented of the effects of changing conceptions of race and drugs on sentencing outcomes during a modern anti-drug crusade. This crusade involved a compromise between conservative and liberal impulses in which "big dealers" were identified as villains, while middle-class youth and nonwhites (but the latter only insofar as they were rarely big dealers in a racially stratified drug trade) were reconceived as victims. The results of our contextualized analysis allow us to make sense of otherwise anomalous findings and suggest that while there may be a trend toward equality in American criminal sentencing, there are also patterns of differential leniency and severity that can only be revealed when changing conceptions of race and crime are taken into account.
Variation in sentencing outcomes represents the actions of a number of members of the criminal justice system. To isolate the part of the variation that is due to the discretion of the judge (or other sentencing agent, such as a prosecutor), one can model the sentencing guidelines themselves. Such a model captures any non-linearity in the sentencing grid. In practice, modeling the guidelines rather than legal factor scores (as is common in the literature) means that more of the variation that race and legal factors share in common will be attributed to the racial status of the offender. Using data from Maryland, we find that African Americans have 20% longer sentences than whites, on average, holding constant age, gender, and recommended sentence length from the guidelines. We find more judicial discretion and greater racial disparity than is generally found in the literature. Moreover, when we begin to try to explain this discretion, we find that judges tended to give longer sentences (relative to those recommended by the guidelines) to people in the part of the guidelines grid with longer recommended sentences (who are disproportionately African American) than they gave to people in the part of the grid with lower recommended sentences.
This study examines county-level influences on sentencing practices in South Carolina, a state with a sentencing structure that is different from many of the jurisdictions that have been the focus of recent county-level studies. Using multilevel models, we examined the impact that changes in socioeconomic disadvantage, changes in crime rates, the county political makeup, and county caseload had on incarceration and expected sentence length determinations. For the incarceration decision, worsening socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with a modest increase in the likelihood of incarceration in a county while counties with heavier caseloads were slightly less likely to incarcerate offenders. None of the county-level indicators were significant for the sentence length decision. The results reveal relatively small levels of variation in outcomes across counties, suggesting that South Carolina court communities are largely characterized by similarities, perhaps due to the state's legal culture characteristics and sentencing structure.
Policy and knowledge concerning mandatory minimum sentences have long marched in different directions in the United States. There is no credible evidence that the enactment or implementation of such sentences has significant deterrent effects, but there is massive evidence, which has accumulated for two centuries, that mandatory minimums foster circumvention by judges, juries, and prosecutors; reduce accountability and transparency; produce injustices in many cases; and result in wide unwarranted disparities in the handling of similar cases. No country besides the United States has adopted many mandatory penalty laws, and none has adopted laws as severe as those in the United States. If policy makers took account of research evidence (and informed practitioners’ views), existing laws would be repealed and no new ones would be enacted.
This article develops a macrolevel framework on inequality and juvenile court processing by integrating ideas drawn from conflict theory, research on urban poverty, and recent race-specific trends in drug enforcement. Using 1985 data for more than 200 U.S. counties, we examine how structural context-especially racial inequality and the concentration of "underclass" poverty-influence the formal petitioning, predisposition detention, and out-of-home placement of juveniles. The data are generally consistent with the hypothesis that underclass blacks are viewed as a threatening group to middle-class populations and are thus subjected to increased control by the juvenile justice system. We discuss the implications of our results for a better understanding of the relationship between larger societal forces of increasing poverty and racial inequality and local systems of formal social control.
Based on an integration of work on uncertainty avoidance in decision making with research on causal attribution in punishment, the author hypothesizes that judges attempt to manage uncertainty by developing “patterned responses” that are the product of an attribution process involving assessments of the offender's likelihood of committing future crime. Washington, D. C, felony sentencing data generated by the Prosecutor's Management and Information System (PROMIS) were used to test this integrated theoretical model. Support for the theoretical integration is provided by the evidence of the effects of prior record, defendant's race, use of a weapon, pretrial release, and the interaction between defendant's race and bail outcome on sentence severity. Contrary to common suppositions, information on defendant-victim relationship and victim provocation was unrelated to sentence severity. Further research should examine judges' attempt to reduce uncertainty by relying on stereotypes and attributions linked to the likelihood of recidivism.
This study examines the influence of social and legal contextual factors on the processing of individual felony cases in large urban jurisdictions for 1998. Results of hierarchical logistic regression analyses that control for the effects of individual case-level factors show that three jurisdictional characteristics—use of sentencing guidelines, level of crime, and racial composition—influence the decision to imprison. These findings suggest that the type of sentence one receives and the reason one receives it partially depend on where it is meted out. This research demonstrates the importance of accounting for case-level factors in studies of cross-jurisdictional differences in punitiveness.
This study calls into question the use of the total incarceration response variable incorporated into sentencing studies over the past 30 years. Specifically, using data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS), it argues–and reveals–that prison and jail represent two distinct institutions, and that the judge's decision on disposition should take that factor into account. It recommends that researchers should therefore reconsider use of the total incarceration variable, which combines prison and jail into a single response category.
This research examines the influence of several important community characteristics on the sentencing of convicted felony defendants, net of other predictors associated with sentencing decisions. Using an appropriate multilevel technique, I find that several community characteristics affect the likelihood that defendants are sentenced to prison versus jail. However, none of the community characteristics influence the odds of prison versus non‐custodial sanctions or jail versus non‐custodial sanctions for these defendants. This underscores the importance of using sentencing measures beyond the basic “in/out” dichotomy. Even more importantly, the results suggest that there remains a statistically significant and substantial amount of sentencing variation across counties after controlling for relevant individual‐ and community‐level factors. The implications of these findings for research, theory, and policy‐making are discussed.
Although the social context of a court is often claimed to be important to understanding the effect of the offender's race on punishment decisions, the links between context and racial disparities in punishment decisions are not well understood. I propose and test four hypotheses involving elements that may link social context to racial disparities in punishment decisions: urbanization, racial threat, economic threat, and crime control. I test these four hypotheses with sentencing data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing for the period 1991 to 1994. The main findings are as follows: (1) punishment severity varies by court jurisdiction, even after controlling for offender and case characteristics; (2) racial disparities vary by court jurisdiction, with controls for other offender and case characteristics; (3) measures of social context explain little of the contextual variation in punishment decisions for all offenders; and (4) measures of social context do not explain racial disparities in punishment decisions. Thus, I find convincing evidence of contextual variation in punishment decisions, but typical indicators of social context do not explain these variations.
Research on sentencing has made clear that factors beyond case and offenders' attributes influence court decisions. Environmental and procedural characteristics also significantly affect the sentences of criminal courts. Yet, while state-level studies regularly control for such factors, most research on modern federal determinate sentencing has neglected jurisdictional attributes and variation as sources of extralegal sentence disparity. Using the organizational context and social worlds theoretical perspectives with a multilevel analytical approach, this study assessed how district and circuit of adjudication affect case-level lengths of sentences for federal drug-trafficking offenses, finding that both significantly affect sentencing outcomes and their predictors.
This article examines sentencing outcomes in 73 counties in Minnesota to appraise three theoretical approaches to sentencing: the formal legal theory of sentencing, which predicts that legal variables are the primary determinants of sentencing, the substantive political theory, which predicts that legal and social status variables determine sentencing, and the organizational maintenance theory, which predicts that legal and processing variables determine sentencing. The findings demonstrate that the effects of legal variables are important determinants of sentencing irrespective of the organizational context whereas the effects of plea are conditioned by the level of bureaucratization in courts. The results also suggest that racial effects on sentencing are curtailed in the context of sentencing guidelines.
This study used hierarchical logistic modeling to examine the impact of legal, extrale- gal, and contextual variables on the decision to sentence felons to prison in a sample of large urban counties in 1996. None of the four contextual (county-level) vari- ables—the level of crime, unemployment rate, racial composition, and region— increased the likelihood of a prison sentence, but 10 case-level factors, both legal and extralegal, and several macro-micro interaction terms were influential. These results demonstrate the importance of considering smaller geographic units (i.e., counties instead of states) and controlling for case-level factors in research on interjuris- dictional differences in prison use.
Introduction, 99. — I. Some general features of rational choice, 100.— II. The essential simplifications, 103. — III. Existence
and uniqueness of solutions, 111. — IV. Further comments on dynamics, 113. — V. Conclusion, 114. — Appendix, 115.
Florida statutes allow for the application of enhanced sentences to defendants designated as “Career Offenders.” The application of these laws is discretionary and as such, prosecutors seek the designation for a fraction of the defendants who qualify. Utilizing Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling, this paper examines whether individual attributes, such as race and ethnicity, impact an individual’s likelihood of receiving the Career Offender designation for 13,704 males sentenced to prison between 2002 and 2004. The second-level analysis incorporates county characteristics into the equation and tests whether these predictors have either a direct or a cross-level effect on the relationship. The broad theoretical framework that guides the present research is grounded in the social threat and social control perspective, which argues that minorities on both the individual and aggregate levels may be perceived as threatening in ways that can mobilize or enhance social controls.
This study examines the theoretical and empirical linkages between criminal court social contexts and the judicial use of sentences that deviate from the recommendations of sentencing guidelines. Individual sentencing data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) are combined with county-level measures of social context to examine predictions about the role courtroom characteristics play in judicial departures. Results from hierarchical analyses suggest that the likelihood of departure varies significantly across courts, even after accounting for variations in individual case characteristics. Several measures of courtroom social context—including the size of the court, its caseload pressure and the overall guidelines compliance rate—are significantly related to the individual likelihood of receiving a departure sentence. Moreover, the social context of the court also conditions the influence of various individual-level sentencing considerations. Findings are discussed in relation to contemporary theoretical perspectives on courtroom decision making and future directions for research on contextual disparities in criminal sentencing are suggested.
Numerous studies have addressed the question: Are African-Americans treated more harshly than similarly situated whites? This
research employs meta-analysis to synthesize this body of research. One-hundred-sixteen statistically independent contrasts
were coded from 71 published and unpublished studies. Coded study and contextual features are used to explain variation in
research findings. Analyses indicate that African-Americans generally are sentenced more harshly than whites; the magnitude
of this race effect is statistically significant but small and highly variable. Larger estimates of unwarranted disparity
are found in contrasts that examine drug offenses, imprisonment or discretionary decisions, do not pool cases from several
smaller jurisdictions, utilize imprecise measures, or omit key variables. Yet, even when consideration is confined to those
contrasts employing key controls and precise measures of key variables, unwarranted racial disparities persists. Further,
a substantial proportion of variability in study results is explained by study factors, particularly methodological factors.
Designation as a “Habitual Offender” is an enhanced form of punishment which unlike, “Three Strikes” or “10-20-Life,” is entirely
discretionary. We use Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling to assess the direct effects of race and Latino ethnicity on
the designation of Habitual Offenders as well as the effect of both static and dynamic indicators of racial and ethnic threat
on those outcomes. Our data include 26,740 adults sentenced to prison in Florida between 2002 and 2004 who were statutorily
eligible to be sentenced as Habitual. The odds of receiving this designation are significantly increased for black and Latino
defendants as compared to whites, though race and ethnicity effects vary substantially by crime type, being strongest for
drug offenses and negligible for violent crimes. Static measures of group level threat (% black and % Latino) have no cross-level
effect on sentencing by race or Latino ethnicity. However, increasing black population over time increases the odds of being
sentenced as Habitual for both black and Latino defendants. Increasing Latino population increases the odds of Habitual Offender
sentencing for Latinos, but decreases it for blacks. The prospect of engaging dynamic as opposed to static measures of threat in future criminal justice and other social control research is discussed.
KeywordsDynamic threat–Judicial outcomes–Race and ethnicity–Social contexts–Hierarchical modeling
This paper discusses the bias that results from using nonrandomly selected samples to estimate behavioral relationships as an ordinary specification error or "omitted variables" bias. A simple consistent two stage estimator is considered that enables analysts to utilize simple regression methods to estimate behavioral functions by least squares methods. The asymptotic distribution of the estimator is derived.
Gregg at 40. Southwestern Law Review
- E J Mandery
- EJ Mandery
Towards the development of a standardized focal concerns theory of sentencing
- S Maddan
- R D Hartley
Focal concerns theory as conceptual tool for studying intersectionality in sentencing disparities: Focus on gender and race along with age
- D Steffensmeier
- N Painter-Davis