scholarly journals The Most Discriminatory Federal Judges Give Black and Hispanic Defendants At Least Double the Sentences of White Defendants

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Michael Smith ◽  
Nicholas Goldrosen ◽  
Maria-Veronica Ciocanel ◽  
Rebecca Santorella ◽  
Chad M. Topaz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Focal Concerns ◽  
Data Limitations ◽  
Federal Judges ◽  
White Defendants

In the aggregate, racial inequality in criminal sentencing is an empirically well- established social problem. Yet, data limitations have made it impossible for researchers to systematically determine and name the most racially discriminatory federal judges. The authors use a new, large-scale database to determine and name the observed federal judges who impose the harshest sentence length penalties on Black and Hispanic defendants. Following the focal concerns framework, the authors (1) replicate previous findings that conditional racial disparities in sentence lengths are large in the aggregate, (2) show that judges vary considerably in their estimated degrees of racial discrimination, and (3) list the federal judges who exhibit the clearest evidence of racial discrimination. This list shows that several judges give Black and Hispanic defendants double the sentences they give observationally equivalent white defendants. Accordingly, the results suggest that holding the very most discriminatory judges accountable would yield meaningful improvements in racial equality.

Second Looks at Sentences under the First Step Act

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-85
Author(s):  
Sarah French Russell
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Length ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Second Look ◽  
The People ◽  
The Law ◽  
Supervised Release ◽  
Federal Prisoners ◽  
Federal Judges ◽  
The Impact

Under the First Step Act of 2018, federal prisoners may now petition courts directly for reduction of their sentences, and judges may grant such requests if “extraordinary and compelling reasons” support reduction. Judges are also in the process of imposing reduced sentences in thousands of cases where the First Step Act has retroactively reduced statutory penalties. Not only does the First Step Act offer prisoners new opportunities for sentence reduction, but the law also may change how federal judges understand the impact of their sentencing decisions. Before now, in federal cases, judges rarely had the chance to take a second look at the prison sentences they (or their colleagues) imposed. Encounters between judges and the people they sentenced typically occurred only if a person violated the terms of supervised release after leaving prison. Now, judges can reassess sentence length while someone is still in prison and evaluate whether a reduction in the sentence is warranted. This newfound power allows judges to see their sentencing decisions in a new light and may influence how they conceive of the prison time they impose in future cases.

“Past injustice and present prejudice”: Reducing racial bias and increasing sympathy by framing historical racism as recent

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022110058
Author(s):  
Mason D. Burns ◽  
Erica L. Granz
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Prejudice Reduction ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Subjective Perceptions ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
Past Injustices

Racial privity judgments – or the perceived causal connection between historical racial discrimination and current suffering among Black Americans – predicts sympathy for the victims of past injustices and perceptions of contemporary racial inequality. Four studies investigated the ideological roots of privity judgments; focusing on subjective temporal perceptions associated with privity judgments (e.g., subjective perceptions that past discrimination occurred more, versus less, recently). Study 1 revealed that liberals perceived historical instances of racial discrimination as having occurred more recently than conservatives, and that temporal perceptions of recency were associated with less anti-Black bias. Studies 2–4 manipulated temporal perceptions of recency by framing past discrimination as having occurred more recently. Results revealed that increasing perceived temporal recency resulted in reduced anti-Black bias and greater sympathy for present-day victims of racial discrimination across political ideology. Discussion surrounds how framing historical information as subjectively recent has implications for prejudice reduction.

The gender gap in work–life balance satisfaction across occupations

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 398-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Dilmaghani ◽  
Vurain Tabvuma
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Work Life ◽  
Work Life Balance ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Life Balance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Data Limitations

Purpose The purpose of this study is to compare the gender gaps in work–life balance satisfaction across occupations. Due to data limitations, the studies of work–life balance satisfaction have generally relied on researcher collected data. As a result, large-scale studies encompassing all occupations in the same social and policy context are rare. In several cycles of the Canadian General Social Survey, the respondents are directly asked about their work–life balance (WLB) satisfaction. The present paper takes advantage of this unique opportunity to compare the gender gap in WLB satisfaction across occupations in Canada. Design/methodology/approach This paper pools four cross-sectional datasets (N = 37,335). Multivariate regression analysis is used. Findings Women in management and education are found to have a lower WLB satisfaction than their male counterparts. Conversely, and rather surprisingly, a WLB satisfaction advantage is found for women in transport over males in this occupation. Further investigation shows that the female WLB advantage in transport is driven by the relatively low WLB satisfaction of males in this occupation, while the opposite is true for education. Social implications The findings are discussed in light of the WLB policies and their increasing gender-blindness. Originality/value This paper is the first large-scale study which compares the gender gap in WLB satisfaction across occupations, in a given policy context.

Race, Ethnicity, and Trial Avoidance: A Multilevel Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-451
Author(s):  
Jacqueline G. Lee ◽  
Rebecca L. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Multilevel Analysis ◽  
Hierarchical Linear Modeling ◽  
County Level ◽  
Racial Threat ◽  
Linear Modeling ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Black Defendants ◽  
White Defendants ◽  
Threat Theory

Minority criminal defendants are more likely than White defendants to exercise their right to trial, which is concerning given that research also consistently finds trial sentences to be harsher than those obtained via pleas. However, guilty pleas are not the only disposition available for avoiding a trial; pretrial diversions and case dismissals also serve as mechanisms for trial avoidance. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we find that Black criminal defendants are more likely than Whites to go to trial rather than receive other case disposition. Relationships for Hispanic defendants are less consistent. Fewer county-level effects emerge than expected, providing little to no support for racial threat theory. Results suggest that Black defendants are less often able or willing to avoid a trial, a finding which highlights and perhaps helps to explain racial disparities in final sentencing outcomes.

MR. SECRETARY, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 441-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florent de Bodman ◽  
Pamela R. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Postsecondary Education ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Housing Program ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
Systemic Discrimination ◽  
Socioeconomic Consequences

AbstractRacial segregation has been a persistent feature of the American social landscape and a longstanding contributor to racial inequality, particularly between Blacks and Whites. Affirmative action policies have been used to address the systemic discrimination and attendant socioeconomic consequences to which African Americans have been subjected. Yet affirmative action has not been widely used in all domains in which segregation and systemic discrimination occurred. Although such policies have been adopted in the domains of employment and postsecondary education, few federal affirmative action programs have been used in housing. This is surprising given high levels of segregation across the metropolitan United States, as well as the stated integrative objectives of the U.S. Congress when it passed the Fair Housing Act of1968. To understand this puzzle, we use the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, a housing mobility effort of the Federal government and the Chicago Housing Authority that used explicit racial criteria, as a surrogate for affirmative action in housing more broadly. We conduct a comparative analysis of Gautreaux and affirmative action in college admissions using insights from applied political philosophy and sociology. By confronting Gautreaux with a more traditional affirmative action program, we are able to identify and compare the judicial, moral, and instrumental justifications for each, enabling us to draw conclusions about whether and how affirmative action can justifiably be used on a large scale to reduce neighborhood segregation, the possible forms it could take, and the difficulties it would face. We close with a discussion of the recent shift toward integration taken by the Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Obama administration, its relationship to affirmative action, and its implications for declines in residential segregation in the United States.

Analyzing Variation in Prior Record Penalties Across Conviction Offenses

2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (7) ◽  
pp. 831-855 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cassidy ◽  
Jason Rydberg
Keyword(s):  
Sex Offenders ◽  
Length Distribution ◽  
Criminal History ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Focal Concerns ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
Conditional Sentence ◽  
Focal Concerns Perspective ◽  
The Impact

The focal concerns perspective suggests that criminal history and the nature of the offense interact to influence judicial assessments of community threat, yet this question has not been subject to systematic empirical examination. Drawing on 4 years of data (2007-2010) from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing ( N = 75,676), we utilize linear quantile mixed models (LQMM) to examine the impact of prior record on the conditional distribution of sentence lengths across violent, property, drug, and sex offenders, controlling for the effects of important individual and judicial district-level covariates. The results indicate that prior record penalties differ both between and within conviction offense types across the conditional sentence length distribution. Substantive, theoretical, and methodological implications are discussed.

Disparities in Women’s Prison Sentences: Exploring the Nexus Between Motherhood, Drug Offense, and Sentence Length

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 420-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahram Cho ◽  
Melinda Tasca
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Drug Offenders ◽  
Focal Concerns ◽  
Drug Offense ◽  
Report Data ◽  
Women's Prison ◽  
Self Report Data

Drawing upon focal concerns and familial paternalism frameworks, we explore the effects of motherhood, various maternal indicators, and type of offense on prison sentences using official and self-report data on 419 incarcerated women in the United States. Results revealed that drug offenders were sentenced more leniently than other offenders, whereas mothers were not sentenced differently from women without children. Mothers who lived with their children received shorter prison terms than mothers who were absent prior to arrest. This study fills gaps in knowledge on discretion in punishment in light of growing rates of female imprisonment.

Racial inequality and the recognition of racial discrimination in Jamaica

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 688-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique D. A. Kelly ◽  
Stanley R. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Racial Inequality

An Examination of the Impacts of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity on the Judicial Processing of Offenders in Family Violence Cases

2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (13) ◽  
pp. 1663-1697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina L. Freiburger ◽  
Danielle Romain
Keyword(s):  
Family Violence ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Ethnic Disparities ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Pretrial Release ◽  
Focal Concerns ◽  
White Offenders ◽  
Black Defendants ◽  
Focal Concerns Perspective ◽  
To Receive

Using the focal concerns perspective, the present study examined possible gender, race, and ethnic disparities on judges’ pretrial release, incarceration, and sentence length decisions in family violence cases. The results indicate that males were more likely to receive an order of bail (as opposed to release on own recognizance), received higher bail amounts, were less likely to make bail, were more likely to receive prison opposed to jail, and were incarcerated for significantly longer periods of time than women. Hispanic defendants were more likely than White defendants to receive higher bail amounts and were more likely to be detained until sentencing. Black defendants, on the other hand, were more likely to receive prison as opposed to jail than White offenders.

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